Our Pioneering Preventative Programmes are going from Strength to Strength

At Obex we are so incredibly proud to be working with the NHS on a couple of initiatives.

One is ‘My Mouth Matters’ which looks to increase oral care within a care home setting, particularly in dementia patients! This initiative has various responsibilities including training the staff within the care home to make sure they know how to spot an issue, and also how to best care for the resident’s oral health. Also, we review their oral health policies, and care plans and carry out risk assessments to make sure that the care home is compliant when it comes to CQC expectations.

To be confident in working with dementia patients, I took an optional dementia course and learnt so much about the disease that I did not know before, which really helps me with my patient approach.

All of the above is so important for dementia patients as they are unable to care for themselves like they used to and completely rely on the care staff for help. It feels so good to be making a difference in the care home sector.

The other initiative is the Diabetes screening which we are currently hosting at 3 of our practices, Luton, Hitchin and Houghton Regis. This screening is aimed at our patients who are over 40 years of age and not currently diagnosed with diabetes or tested in the past year. The patients will have an on-the-spot finger prick test which will help us determine if the patient is at high risk or not. If the reading comes back as high risk, we refer to the GP to start the diagnosis pathway. By offering this free test to patients at the dental practice, we are hoping that patients are more likely to catch diabetes early enough that we can make changes such as diet changes or an exercise programme to decrease the risk, which hopefully will reduce the risk of needing medical intervention.

You might be interested to know that as of the end of July, across the trial sites we have screened:

• 40 patients at Houghton Regis

• 111 patients at Hitchin

• 67 patients at Luton

As you can imagine, there is a lot of work that goes into these initiatives behind the scenes, but I cannot tell you how rewarding it is to be able to play a part in this to make history within dental care in the NHS, but also make such a difference to our patients lives!

I look forward to updating you all further soon.

Abbi