Caring for the oral health of nursing home residents is an important part of what we do at Power Dental. Onsite treatment.
Oral health care and education in nursing homes is very important to me, and I’ve always had an affinity for it. My own Mum was in a nursing home, so I see what is happening. Elderly patients are frequently unable to help themselves, and I feel we’ve got a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves.
In Nursing Homes dentistry we begin with education, but that will not fix an emergency situation so we do a lot of urgent treatment in Nursing Homes. These include simple extractions, simple fillings, denture repairs and new dentures. We carry these out in many Aged Care facilities in the St George area and Sutherland Shire.
We also have our hygienist go out and apart from educating the staff carries out a lot of oral hygiene on the residents. That is, scaling, cleaning and fluoride application. We recommend more frequent than usual cleaning for most Aged Care residents - anywhere from 3 to 6 monthly. Our hygienist also carries out oral health screenings at a number of nursing homes for those residents who agree to it - this is arranged by the management of each Aged Care facility. We then report back to the family and they let us know what treatment they would like us to go ahead with.
However, we work closely with one Aged care facility, in particular - Huntingdon Gardens at Bexley. In 2019 we placed a dental chair in a room provided by them and fitted it out like a regular dental surgery, including x-ray and computer. As a result we can carry out a full range of services to any resident there who can make it into our chair, including large fillings, surgical extractions, deep scaling, root canal therapy and crown and bridgework on top of the regular treatment we can perform at any Nursing Home. It has been a real benefit to the residents there and we enjoy being able to provide more for those who live there. The website of Huntingdon gardens can be found here: http://huntingdongardens.com.au/
The number of people going into care is increasing so this is a major issue I am passionate about. If you are reading this blog post and have family members in a nursing home, I would like to add we do general treatment at various locations, and if it’s more complicated we can bring them to us and we have of course got wheelchair access in our building.