Article
Basic Guide to Oral Health Education and Promotion
This book aims to provide a basic overview of oral health promotion and is the course companion for UK dental nurses studying for the NEBDN Certificate in oral health promotion. Between them the authors, Simon Felton and Alison Chapman, have run the oral health education course in Bristol and their passion for this field of Dentistry is evident throughout the book.
Oral health promotion and preventive dentistry are becoming more important in everyday practice (highlighted by the government's publication Delivering Better Oral Health: An Evidence-Based Toolkit for Prevention. However, there are few texts that deal specifically with this topic. This book is mainly targeted at dental nurses studying oral health promotion, but it is also aimed at dentists, hygienists, therapists and other health professionals who provide advice and information on oral health.
The book is set out into six sections: the first outlines the oral structures, the second gives an overview of oral disease, and the final four sections concentrate on prevention or oral disease and delivering oral health messages. Each section is further divided into shorter chapters, with the aims of the chapter clearly stated at the beginning, and finishing with a selection of self-assessments, which appear to be mainly aimed at the NEBDN students.
This information is laid out very clearly in a logical sequence, with much of the text in short paragraphs or bullet points, making this a good book to use for revision and easy-to-use quick reference.
The strength of this book is the second half, which deals with prevention of oral disease, delivering oral health messages, oral health target groups and oral health and society. It goes into detail on structuring and providing oral hygiene sessions, and contains useful information on structuring oral health promotion and targeting this information at specific groups of patients, for example parents of young children, teenagers or older patients. It gives a synopsis of specific needs and potential problems and then summarizes the specific advice to each group, with tips on communicating with different patients. While it may not be practical to put aside a specific session for oral health education, the advice and practices outlined could easily be adapted to be incorporated into a routine appointment. There are also useful chapters on learning styles, education theory and smoking cessation. Unfortunately, there are some glaring factual errors in the first two sections of the book, dealing with oral disease, which would be picked up by a dental student, and much of the information is perhaps oversimplified. While this may be helpful for readers with no previous dental knowledge, it is at times confused, compounded by the factual errors. Another criticism would be that some of the clinical photographs are of poor quality and out-of-date, depicting ungloved hands.
However, all things considered, this book achieves what it sets out to, and would be useful for those not in the field of dentistry who are called upon to deliver oral health messages, or anyone studying for their NEBDN certificate (as it is the course text). The short sections and clear layout would also make this a good reference for any dental professional to use in conjunction with other documents, such as Delivering Better Oral Health: An Evidence-Based Toolkit for Prevention.