[Integrating risks for oral diseases into Structured Information Collection: A practice development project]

Integrating risks for oral diseases into Structured Information Collection: A practice development project Abstract: Background: Deficient oral hygiene and oral diseases are highly prevalent among nursing staff. Up to now, there is no assessment for nursing professionals integrated in the daily nursing routine, which depicts the complex risks for oral diseases. The Structured Information Collection (SIS) is a concept to guide the nursing process and enables individual action planning. Aim: The aim was to integrate oral diseases as a nursing-relevant risk into the SIS and to develop an assessment instrument for oral hygiene deficits/diseases integrated into the SIS topic areas. Methods: Based on a literature search, 21 systematic reviews describing SIS topic areas and oral health risks were analysed by a panel of experts. The caregiver-relevant oral health risks identified in this way were compared with existing oral health assessment instruments and with screening criteria recommended in the German national expert standard for the promotion of oral health in care. Since none of the oral health assessments covers all nursing-relevant oral health risks and the recommended screening criteria of the expert standard, the area of "oral diseases" was integrated into the SIS as an additional category, and an oral health assessment adapted to the SIS was developed. Results: This article presents the SIS expanded to include nursing-relevant oral disease risk and the newly developed Oral Risk Assessment Prevention (Mu-RAP) for use by nurses. Conclusions: The SIS expanded to include oral disease and the Mu-RAP for identifying oral hygiene deficits/diseases cover all nursing-relevant oral health risks. Further studies on the applicability, reliability, and validity of the instrument, as well as on care-effective and patient-relevant effects of its use are needed.