Dental visit behavior and satisfaction of dental service for elderly residents in long-term care institutions in Kaohsiung area

• Main Authors: Ching-Fen Lin, 林靜芬
• Other Authors: Shun-Te Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98281065106067782676

碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 口腔衛生科學研究所 === 98 === The main purpose of this study was to investigate the dentist visiting experience of residents above 65 years old, their satisfaction of dental service in the past three years and explored their correlation.Method: This study was a cross-sectional study and a stratified-purposive sampling survey. The data was collected from 335 residents above 65 years old in 19 long-term care institutions in Kaohsiung City and County from August to December 2009, questionnaires including: sex, age, and education level, duration of living in long-term care institutions, related systemic diseases, type and level of disability, the dentist visiting experience and the satisfaction of dental service. The collected data was processed and analyzed with statistical software JMP6.0 and SPSS10.0, and the correlation of each variable was analyzed by Chi-Square Test for Trend, ANOVA, and Logistic regression.Results: There were a total of 335 residents interviewed, 153 male and 182 female residents. The average age of the residents was 78.85 years old. The highest distribution of age range was between 75 and 84 years old. For social demographic variables, 32.8% of residents were certified as disabled, and 53.3% with motion barrier. The residents were diagnosed with 2.4 chronic diseases in average, among that, hypertension was the most often seen chronic disease 53.4%, DM was 35.5%, and “stroke” was 21.2% respectively. In oral condition, the number of existed and with functional teeth more than 20, ranged between 1-19 and the edentulous was 12.8%, 59.7% and 27.5% respectively. Most of the residents (38.2%) stayed in the institutions less than one year. The utilization of dental services of residents in the past three years was 28.4% and the follow-up rate of every single year in the past three years was 4.6%. The main reason of dental visit was toothache (75.8%). The majority of reasons for irregular dental check-up was “no need” (57.7%), and “motion barrier” (53.3%). Furthermore, the satisfaction of residents to the overall dental service in the past 3 years showed that the “satisfied” was almost the even with “dissatisfied” (50.5%, 49.5%). The highest satisfied item was “the attitude of the dentist” (83.1%), and then “the attitude of the dental receptionist” (78.9%). Nevertheless,”oral education of dental professionals” was the lowest satisfied item.Conclusions: The study shows that the oral health condition of the elderly is becoming worse due to the number of elderly population and their physical function impairment and chronic diseases is gradually increasing in Taiwan. The main factors affecting dental visit are as follows: age of residents, ADL, chronic diseases and tooth-brushing behavior. Although satisfaction of dental services doesn’t affect the utility rate of dental visit for the elderly residents, “willingness of dental check-up” is an important factor to affect the dental service satisfaction.In order to improve the oral health of elderly residents in the long-term care institutions, the activities of oral hygiene instruction for the elderly residents should be arranged in the institutions by the professionals, a biannual oral examination for long-term care residents is highly recommended. Furthermore, the continuous education curriculum concerning oral health education to enhance the knowledge and skill of dentists, dental hygienists, assistants and caregivers should be conducted. provide oral education and prevention information, and promote the service attitude of dental professionals. We need to make ponder to solve the elderly resident''s motion barrier further.