Professional Dental Teams

Professional Dental Teams are in a prime position to help people improve their daily oral care routine. Whilst you may discuss oral health with clients on a regular basis, actively promoting it is something which is often forgotten.

Expand your Knowledge
Have a look at The Scottish Oral Health Improvement Network (SOHIN) section of the NHS Knowledge Network also provides a range of resources and support for oral health professionals wishing to expand their knowledge of, or undertake oral health promotion in Scotland. Whilst an NHS Athens account is required to engage with the SOHIN network, details of how this can be obtained are provided on the website.

Consider Smoking Cessation Training
Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP) guidelines state all dental patients should have their smoking status reviewed on a regular basis given that smoking is associated with poor periodontal status, adverse effects of medications of soft oral tissues, oral cancer and systemic disease.

Dental staff are in a unique position to address the issue of tobacco smoking as whilst other healthcare teams may only engage with people who are already suffering from a health condition, the dental team spends significant amounts of time delivering preventive and routine care to patients without such conditions.

This comparatively younger, healthier patient profile gives them a unique opportunity to help patients stop smoking before significant or irreversible damage is done to their health.

Brief Advice
Brief (less than 3 minute) interventions have been shown to be highly effective for helping patients stop smoking.  Indeed, it’s estimated that between 63,000 and 190,000 people may quit smoking in the UK each year if dental practices routinely offered smoking cessation advice to patients. For these reasons, NHS Grampian is encouraging dental practices to consider arranging ‘Raising The Issue’ brief advice training for their staff. Used with success in other primary care facilities, the training provides staff with the skills and confidence to conduct a brief intervention with patients where they:

1. Ask the patient if they are a smoker and, if so, if they would like to stop
2. Advise the patient on the value of stopping
3. Assist the patient to stop by advertising the appropriate services (for example, in Grampian, the NHSG Smoking Advice Service (SAS) and pharmacy programmes)
4. Arrange a follow up, for example, through referral to one of the aforementioned support services

It is worth emphasizing that the person conducting the conversation is not asked to deliver the actual smoking cessation activities themselves, they are merely asking the question (‘Are you a smoker?’), highlighting the benefits of not smoking and referring the patient onwards as appropriate.