As a dental hygienist, having oral health educator qualifications are fundamental.  Dental hygiene focuses on educating clients and the public regarding oral health and the prevention of oral diseases through oral health education. Dental hygienists should be able to use oral health education by applying educational theory and theoretical frame that incorporates psychosocial principles and changes client’s oral health knowledge, beliefs and attitudes according to their physical and mental abilities. Dental hygienists require motivational assessments, demonstrations of various product use, and development of training plans.[2]

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    In my first reflection, I thought that a dental hygienist was a person with the expertise to keep teeth free of debris, provide oral hygiene instruction for client’s habits, give oral health presentations in the dental field. While my experience as a dental assistant certainly helped me to understand concepts and practice education, I was limited in delivering more in-depth oral health education to a variety of target groups. After two years of practicing oral health education for various target audiences, I think that both my technical and knowledge aspects as an oral health educator have gone through a lot of development. In particular, the idea of oral health in relation to systemic health has established notably, which is why it must be emphasized by dental hygienist and is the most important reason why dental hygiene plays an important role as an oral health educator. However, I have practiced as an oral hygiene educator in many community facilities with varied range of audience. I have completely changed my first thought and now I am proud of my profession.

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At the end of the first year, I and my community health group partner had a mission to develop oral health training sessions for pre- school classes. This assignment was a hands-on exercise in our community health class and my partner and myself visited a kindergarten class in Winnipeg, observed the children for an hour, and then began planning for our oral health education audience. Our target group was kindergarten children who were five years old. At this age, children are going through various developmental milestones such as physical, cognitive and social. The cognitive capacities of preschoolers are advanced; at that age they start learning and understanding numbers and letters. In fact, the first lesson we observed during our visit to the kindergarten class was a lesson about letters. Thus, we created an activity where students would arrange the letters of “Brush your teeth”, then they would use toothpaste which made of glitter to color the letter with a pea size amount. By using their learning stage, the information was delivered in a more effective manner.  As for communication and language, children at that age were capable of understanding and using complex language. During our classroom observation, we noticed that when kindergarten teacher was talking with the children, she took into account the children’s potential as active listeners, she further explained to us that there is a wide range of individual deviation in kindergartner’s verbal skills and their attention span. Based on observation, we made a plan under goal, objective and teaching method that were focused on target group.  We communicated information in small units, and then build new information into what the children already knew. Afterwards, we examined their understanding by using “tell, show, do” approach, along with encouraging questions to engage their curiosity. Children at that age understood complex instructions, for example, they understood positional vocabulary such as “around”, “below,” or, “next to.”  We learned their level of understanding was critical for our lesson plan, especially for explaining brushing and flossing techniques. Although we divided the students into three groups, we only provided two activities. It would have been better to create more activities to avoid any distraction and conflicts. From this experience, I learned that it was hard to implement a lesson exactly according to how it was planned. Thus, for my future oral health education, I will develop a flexible plan and also my experience may help my future oral health education skills. [Evidence 1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evidence 1. Presentation to the kindergarten class at Lakewood elementary school

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       I genuinely believe that one must have a patient-first mindset in order to work in a healthcare related industry.  Dental hygienist can change client’s behaviour and belief on clients’ oral health, and it can determine clients’ lifelong habit and attitude on their oral hygiene. Thus, I like to focus on providing oral health education specifically to the newcomers, indigenous people, refugees or low socio-economic status clients who have more need of social determinant of health. Handling externship work for senior citizens in the Mount Carmel clinic and Access downtown clinic, I found that the majority of newcomers had poor dental health due to inadequate oral health service and lack of educating programs. I had two clinical visits at Mount Carmel Dental Clinic during the first and second semesters in my second year. The time per client was given two hours, but I had to spent 1 hour and 40 minutes only for debridement since they had a lot of calculus and they were not used to receiving dental care. After all calculus was removed, I spent 20minutes to provide oral hygiene education and I used dentoform and toothbrush to provide tell- show -do method for toothbrush instruction. They were all people who had never learned how to brush their teeth in their lifetime, and some even said they had brushed their teeth with tree leaves. The clients touched the toothbrush, simulated it, and a caregiver with young children learned how to brush the children’s teeth, as well as for the caregiver themselves. I also provided information regarding oral health, purpose of teeth, oral diseases and risk factors, tooth decay, childhood tooth decay, nutrition, oral hygiene guidelines for children of different ages, oral hygiene guidelines for adults, and the role of dental hygienists. Although it was only a short time of 20 minutes, while preparing the information, I learned that I had to be aware of the target audience’ characters, such as newcomers who have language proficiency issue and cultural differences. I emphasized that they should continue to brush their teeth two times in a day by providing them sample toothbrushes, floss, toothpaste and Listerine.

    Although there are adequate general healthcare personnel and resources in Canada’s general hospital or health care facility, there are shortage of oral healthcare personnel, and with this awareness, I will try to a provide a dental hygiene instruction for clinic visitor after providing my debridement treatment to clients to provide information about how to brush teeth properly and oral health information. I have aimed to continue to work as a clinical oral hygiene profession and be an oral health educator for people from a disadvantaged background. In the past two years, I have seen many refugees, homeless and indigenous clients which I became convinced that the community base oral hygiene educator is a role that I could fulfill my dream as a dental hygienist. [Evidence 2]

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Evidence 2. Demonstrating the modified bass tooth brush technique at the Mount Carmel dental clinic.

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     My third evidence of my oral health educator is my client’s survey result. I believed that clients who visit multiple times to receive dental hygiene treatment from dental hygiene student, they were looking for educational aspects including oral hygiene therapeutic treatment. Thus, I consider the clients’ perspective when I make my dental hygiene care plan. Also, when I prepare a dental hygiene care plan, I use the clients’ name in my presentation, including visual materials (pictures), and use their oral hygiene measurement value. When clients see my presentation material, they could see their name on the top of the slide and they could see their gum bleeding percentage (Bleeding on Probing), plaque level (plaque scores) with sample pictures. Thus, they could understand what their current oral hygiene status is, their oral health problems, and they could be motivated since the measurement numbers were not only general explanation, but it contains their actual oral hygiene measurement number. I used this presentation material for all of my clients during my second year. As part of our clinical evaluation process, we had to collect survey forms from minimum of 5 clients in each semester. In the survey form, my oral health education was evaluated by my five clients, and ‘sharing information’ represents my oral health education. In my first reflection, my education level was only 3.0 out of 5.0. As my first reflection, I was not confident, and I did not know how to provide and what kind of information should I advise to my clients. However, since I made my individual care plan presentation with visual materials, my clients left a good feedback that indicated 4.4 out of 5.0. In my last semester, one of my clients left a comment that my education style was easily understood, which was my goal of client education. 

 

 

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Evidence 3. Client survey result and care plan presentation material

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     Oral health educator as a dental hygienist refers to a valuable role, which possess a useful knowledge and communication skills that can be differentiated from technicians, and this is why dental hygienist is not only to remove calculus, but we are also to educate people. In order to apply the principles of teaching and learning about the relationship between oral health and general health, dental hygienists clearly demonstrate the 'educator' ability.[2]  In order to promote the development of specific attitudes, skills and behaviors that I have learned to improve clients' awareness and increase knowledge, the Community Health course throughout two years was crucial to train myself as a community oral health educator and to perform educational theory, theoretical framework and psychosocial principles. 

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