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Updated: Oct 4, 2025

Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Why Should Primary Care Clinicians Learn to Routinely Examine the Mouth?
Jesse Feierabend-Peters1, Hugh Silk2
1First-year resident in the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency Program in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Abstract:
Most medical schools and primary care residency programs do not teach proper oral examination skills. Despite the existence of proven national oral health curricula for medical professionals, many medical trainees and graduates are ill-equipped to identify oral cancers, make proper referrals, avoid unnecessary referrals, or help patients focus on oral disease prevention. This commentary on a case suggests the importance of educating clinicians to promote and evaluate patients' oral health and proposes curricula for and reasonable scope of such training.
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