Why mouth care is important

Mouth care has an important role in a person’s overall health. Poor oral health can impact on quality of life, lead to pain and sleeplessness, and contribute to reduced self-esteem. On the other hand, having a healthy mouth and teeth helps with chewing and digesting food, gives people confidence, and helps people form and maintain relationships with others by assisting with speech.

Supporting care home residents with mouth care is challenging

Many older people living in care homes live with dementia, and with physical and mental health conditions, and because of this need support with their mouth care. There is research available which suggests effective ways of supporting older people with their mouth care, but poor oral health in care homes is still common and it is clear that there are multiple challenges for staff to overcome to improve this. The challenges faced by staff include difficulties with supporting residents who resist care, dedicating time to mouth care when there are many other competing care duties, and not always having access to relevant training. These issues were identified in 2018 by care staff working in the NICHE-Leeds partnership. We have since been working on developing evidence-based solutions to address these challenges.

 Promoting ‘mouth minutes’

NICHE-Leeds partners, with the School of Dentistry (University of Leeds), recently secured funding from the National Institute for Health Research for a new study: the COMMIT study. We will explore how best to keep residents’ mouths healthy and how to support staff to promote in their day-to-day work effective ‘mouth minutes’ for care home residents.

The COMMIT study will be conducted in two stages. The first stage will involve identifying and summarising existing research evidence on:

• what has been shown to work in some care homes to help keep residents’ mouths healthy;
• what gets in the way of care staff helping to keep mouths healthy;
• what makes it easier; and
• what helps care home staff to engage with mouth care.

The resulting information will then be discussed with people living in care homes, their families, care home staff, and with healthcare staff working in a role promoting oral care for care home residents (for example, community and general practice dentists with care home responsibilities). We will use focus groups and interviews to ask participants to comment on i) resonance and relevance of the review findings; and ii) additional issues they consider pertinent for improving oral care for care.

During the second stage, we will co-produce resources which will help staff to ‘commit’ to mouth minutes in care homes. We will invite care home residents, family members, care home staff, community dentists, general dentist practice, dental nurses, hygiene therapists, dental public health commissioners and also commissioners from older people’s services to attend the workshops.

The COMMIT Study started on 1 October 2021 (for 18 months). Keep in touch with us and stay updated about this important study by following us on Twitter @COMMITStudy and @LeedsNiche @SpillersK

COMMIT Study team members include:

Judy Wright, Senior information specialist and qualified librarian at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds. Tweets @jmwleeds

Paul Wilson, Senior Lecturer Implementation Sciences, Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester Tweets @pmw777

Reena Devi, Senior Research Fellow, School of Healthcare, University of Leeds Tweets @_DrReenaDevi

Alys Griffiths, Lecturer, Institute of Population Health, university of Liverpool Tweets @alysgriffiths_

Julia Csikar, Lecturer in Dental Public Health, School of Dentistry, University of Leeds Tweets @JuliaCsikar

Karen Vinall-Collier, Lecturer in Dental Public Health, School of Dentistry, University of Leeds Tweets @KarenVinallColl

Edna Feenan, a member of the public with personal experience of care homes

Karen Winterburn, a member of the public with personal experience of care homes

Disclaimer

This study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme (NIHR131506). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.