Nursing Staffs Knowledge about and Skills in Providing Oral Hygiene Care for Patients with Neurological Disorders

Several hospitalized patients with neurological disorders depend on nursing staff for their daily health care. Due to several functional limitations of the limbs, oral motor impairments, neglect, apraxia, and hemianopia, oral hygiene self-care is difficult to perform and therefore adequate oral health is difficult to maintain. Next to that, oral dysfunction related to oral motorfunction, mastication, swallowing and saliva control may be affected and does not always recover completely during rehabilitation.

Due to both physical and oral dysfunction, adequate oral health may be threatened, because the affected functions hinder this population when performing daily oral hygiene self-care. Consequently, the responsibility for completing oral care in neurological patients often falls to the nursing staff. Oral health has not been given priority in nursing practice, because there are competing priorities regarding the care nurses provide, but it should become a task with higher priority.
Neurological Disorders
The nursing staff plays an important role in the rehabilitation of patients with neurological disorders through re-teaching them the necessary skills to perform independent oral hygiene. By re-teaching these independent oral hygiene skills, there is potential to improve patients’ hand and oral motor functions, thus enabling improved coping and reduced resistant behavior associated with neurological complications. This will enable the patients to cope with the complications of their diseases.

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