On the front line

Abstract Objective Oral health educators should have the required knowledge, skills and attitude in order to meet the increased needs of the Ministry of Education in Syria as well as to perform their duties in promoting oral health in children appropriately during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study was undertaken to identify core competencies required for oral health educators in elementary schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative exploratory study was undertaken. A focus group which consisted of 5 Medical Education postgraduates and 3 oral health educators’ training team members were invited to formulate a preliminary list of basic competencies. Delphi technique was also adopted through inviting 12 experts in oral health education to evaluate and formulate a final list of elementary schools’ oral health educators’ competencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results A competency framework was developed. Fifty-five competencies were identified including 35 in cognitive domain, 12 skills and 8 attitude competencies. A list of essential competencies has been identified. These competencies should be addressed in training programs targeting oral health educators, which can consequently produce competent educators who can successfully promote and provide health care to all schoolchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Oral health educators

BDJ ◽

10.1038/sj.bdj.4811259 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 196 (9) ◽

pp. 517-517

Author(s):

C Stillman-Lowe

Keyword(s):

Oral Health ◽

Health Educators

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Thousands of new oral health educators

BDJ ◽

10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.860 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 223 (7) ◽

pp. 496-496

Keyword(s):

Oral Health ◽

Health Educators

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Dentists as Oral Health Educators: explorations of a practice

Revista da ABENO ◽

10.30979/rev.abeno.v5i2.1467 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 115-124

Author(s):

Natan Guterman

Keyword(s):

Oral Health ◽

Health Educators

Neste estudo, procurou-se identificar as representações sociais de “Educação em Saúde” construídas pelos alunos da graduação em Odontologia de duas faculdades de Brasília (uma pública e outra privada) e por Cirurgiões-Dentistas (CDs) formados nos anos 80 e 90 em diante, escolhidos aleatoriamente em Brasília-DF. Este trabalho também visou servir de base para investigações mais pormenorizadas e aprofundadas acerca do exercício da atividade educativa em saúde para atender às necessidades da população, no sentido de contribuir com a melhor adequação do perfil profissional. Foram pesquisados ao todo 60 sujeitos, sendo 20 graduandos de cada instituição de ensino e 10 Cirurgiões-Dentistas de cada faixa supracitada. Utilizou-se como instrumento de coleta de dados um questionário contendo perguntas fechadas sobre informações sociodemográficas dos sujeitos, incluindo campo específico para registro do Teste de Associação Livre de Palavras. Nesse teste, solicitou-se aos sujeitos que dissessem as cinco primeiras palavras associadas ao tema “Educação em Saúde” e, posteriormente, as duas palavras mais importantes dentre essas. A análise das citações foi executada por meio da Teoria do Núcleo Central. As respostas obtidas às perguntas fechadas foram transportadas para tabelas, gráficos representativos e diagramas. Os resultados mostraram que as representações sociais dos sujeitos dos quatro grupos estudados tenderam para prevenção/educação.

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How oral health educators conceptualise health promotion: a qualitative study.

10.21203/rs.3.rs-53962/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Stacey Bracksley-O'Grady ◽

Karen Anderson ◽

Mohd Masood

Keyword(s):

Health Promotion ◽

Oral Health ◽

Health Professionals ◽

Nominal Group Technique ◽

Nominal Group ◽

Health Educators ◽

Oral Diseases ◽

Barriers And Opportunities ◽

Health Promotion Practice ◽

Dental Professionals

Abstract Background: Dental diseases, dental caries and periodontal disease, place a significant burden on individual and population health level. These diseases are largely preventable; health promotion initiatives have been shown to decrease the disease rates. However, there is limited implementation of health promotion in dentistry, this could be due to a number of factors, the ethos and philosophy of dentistry is focused on a curative, individualised approach to oral diseases, there is confusion around health promotion as a concept. However, dental professionals are well placed to implement health promotion, but there is a lack of understanding about the training and what dental professionals understand about health promotion.The aim was to explore conceptualization of health promotion among oral health educators and identifying the barriers and opportunities for health promotion in practiceMethods: Nominal group technique (NGT), a highly structured face-to-face meeting, was conducted with 24 oral health educators to explore how they conceptualize health promotion and the barriers and opportunities for health promotion in practice. An additional 4 questions were emailed to oral health educators after the NGT to gather additional data, 6 oral health educators were involved. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis.Results: The oral health educators in this study discussed health promotion in a holistic way, however, health education and behaviour change were mentioned more than other aspects of health promotion. Collaboration with other health professionals and getting involved in already existing health promotion programs were the identified opportunities for health promotion practice. However, the barriers of health promotion practice were identified as the curative approach that underpins dentistry and the lack of funding, time and value placed on health promotion.Conclusions: This study moves beyond a problem describing to problem solving in this space. Collaboration with other health professionals is an opportunity to be capitalised on. However, to see the biggest improvement in health promotion the curative, individualised approach to dentistry needs to be challenged.

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