NICE to see you - to see you delivering Oral Health Promotion - are you ready to change?

NICE have brought out fresh guidelines for oral health promotion and patient centered behaviour change and prevention care in December 2015. These will focus the practice on assessment, advice, behaviour change and prevention. 

They sit right along Outcome 1 and 4 from CQC. 

The guidance is for the whole dental team, clinical and non clinical and they are quite clear there are no exceptions. There will be an expectation for the team to base your advise and recommendation on the Delivering better oral health toolkit while tailoring it to the patients individual needs and using NICE Guidelines on behaviour change - recommendation 8 to be precise. This should involve someone who is trained as a behaviour change practitioner. 

The NICE team recognise that not only will this guideline need patient behaviour change but that there will also be a challenge in motivating the motivators who will drive the change in practice to prevention led.

Those who were part of the pilots for the NHS will have a head start. Those who have already worked out that putting prevention and oral care at the core of the practice is the way to go will be thinking what took them so long?!

But for the rest of us, can we honestly say the whole team is delivering patient centered oral health education and behaviour change? And are we able to show this in our protocols, ways of working and notes?

I see this as an opportunity to really rethink how your practice works. Are you still fixing the problems as your first priority? Is oral health education delivered while you wait for the block to work, or over the patient while you work, or as a monologue at the end of the appointment as you herd them out the door? Have you just given up because they never listen anyway? Have you got a practice or company protocol for training, delivery and auditing of oral health advice? 

Maybe you have just found your No. 1 item on the agenda of your next practice meeting. And that can be a good thing.

Change can be hard, and implementing a new way of working in a busy practice a struggle, but the end benefits will outweigh the pain. Motivated patients are more receptive, grateful and switched on to the value of the treatment you provide. Good communication reduces the risk of litigation. And a team that can see their actions producing a result will stay motivated and work well for the practice they are in.

It is good to revisit your protocols regularly, things change. Here is an article I wrote about this a few years back which still rings true and might help you plan that meeting.