Sammanfattning
During the last decades, there has been an increasing focus on oral challenges in an aging population, especially frail elderly in nursing homes. Daily mouth care is essential for maintaining good oral health, however, there is little knowledge related to daily oral hygiene routines in Norwegian nursing homes.
The purpose of this paper was to assess routines and procedures related to mouth care in long-term nursing homes in Oslo. A questionnaire was sent to leaders of nursing homes (n=49), 33 responded. The majority (94 %) of the respondents reported that they had procedures on oral care and 79 % answered that the residents' need for help to perform oral hygiene was documented in individually customized plans. In over 50 % of the nursing homes, the residents or dependents had to pay for dental hygiene products. Almost 25 % had no routines for documenting the daily oral hygiene performed, in the resident's journal and 85 % had no guidelines regarding frequency and amount of servings of sugary products.
This study indicates that the majority of nursing homes have daily oral hygiene routines, however, there is substantial practice variation related to documentation, purchase of oral care products as well as dietary guidelines for sugary products.