Nursing Home Dental Visits
What we do
At Power Dental Practice we have been visiting people in their homes and in nursing homes since the early 1990s. Most weeks one of our Hurstville team members or our dental hygienist makes a nursing home dental visit to an aged care facility. This is an area in which the team work well together and have vast experience.
As part of our commitment to the community we travel out to the elderly who are unable to make it in to see us. Some of these are our existing patients, but most have not been seen before entering full-time care.
We are strong believers in our preventive approach to dentistry so encourage good oral hygiene in nursing homes. As part of our commitment to Aged Care, we have now set up a dental chair in one local Nursing Home, Huntingdon Gardens in Bexley, to enable us to carry out a wider range of dental care there.
Our nursing home dental team do this by:
- Travelling to the facilities to clean residents’ teeth
- Fluoride treatment
- Advising family and staff on what is best for each patient
- Providing regular free Oral Health Education and training for the care staff in nursing homes in our area
These are exceptionally well-received and benefit the residents immensely.
Of course we cannot carry out very complex treatments in Nursing Homes, but the more common procedures we provide are:
- General preventive Oral Hygiene services – Examinations, cleaning and fluoride
- Denture work –providing new dentures, relining, labelling and repairing existing dentures
- Tooth extractions – for straightforward removals
- Fillings – simple fillings on exposed surfaces
On occasion we may ask that the resident be brought to the surgery where the treatment required is too complex, or if the resident requests a more elaborate treatment alternative- for example, to have a root canal therapy on a tooth to enable it to be saved rather than extract it.
We encourage family to be present wherever practical at Nursing Home visits, but understand that this is not always practical, especially where emergency treatment is being carried out. Nonetheless, we are pleased to discuss treatment matters with family members with the resident’s permission.
