Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 11, 2025

Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Why oral palliative care takes a backseat? A national focus group study on experiences of palliative doctors, nurses
Munikumar Ramasamy Venkatasalu1, Zaidah Rizidah Murang2, Hajah Asmah Binti Haji Husaini2
1Oxford School of Nursing and Midwifery Oxford Brookes University Oxford UK.
Aim:
Poor oral care among frail older people at the end of life endangers quality of life. However, only few dying people have access to oral palliative care services. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate oral palliative care practices and referral patterns for palliative patients in the Brunei healthcare settings.
Design:
An exploratory qualitative study.
Methods:
Five focus groups were conducted among palliative care nurses (N = 7), palliative medicine doctors (N = 4), dentists (N = 6), oncologists (N = 4) and oncology nurses (N = 4). Verbatim was analysed using qualitative thematic analysis.
Results:
Analyses revealed four distinct themes emerging as current oral palliative care assessment and referral practice in the Brunei healthcare settings: "taking a back seat," "opportunistic oral care," "they refused and refused" and "challenging healthcare resources and oral palliative care."
Related Concept Videos
Ethical Issues
Ethical Concerns in Healthcare:
Continuing Care
Ethical Dilemmas II
Nursing Ethical Principles II
Consider the following scenario, which illustrates how these principles are applied in the care of Mr. John, a fifty-year-old teacher diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.
Initially, Mr. John's...
Standards of Care II
Barriers to Effective Communication II
Cultural barriers:
Differences in values, beliefs, religion, knowledge, and tradition can significantly impact communication. Awareness of nonverbal cues is critical, especially when conversing with a patient from a different culture. What appears appropriate in one culture may be inappropriate in another.
Semantic barriers:
As a result of their tendency to use...

