This highly awaited Mini Mouth Care Matters Guide is full of valuable information to support making an improvement towards mouth care in a paediatric setting. 

The guide is a paediatric take on the original adult guide, covering a wide range of topics from the importance of oral health and well being, to suggested products for mouth care. 

This is an essential guide for any paediatric ward. 

You can download the guide from Here

Along with the release of the new Mini Mouth Care Matters guide, we are also excited to inform you we have been working hard to make sure we are up to date with the latest recommendations for the oral health of our adult population.

The original/adult guide was launched in 2016 and was written using many findings and statistics from audits undertaken at East Surrey Hospital.

Since the national launch of Mouth Care Matters we have delivered training to over 100 different trusts across England, many of whom have shared their audit findings and experiences with the Mouth Care Matters team. This data has been used to update the original guide.

This guide is dedicated to the memory of Katie Blake (1978-2018) who was a dental nurse/graphic designer and member of the original mouth care team at East Surrey Hospital. Katie was extremely passionate about improving mouth care in hospitals and was also designed many of the MCM resources that are used in hospitals all over England today.

You can download the updated guide from Here.

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We have developed a resource that will help support health care professionals to improve the standards of mouth care for adult inpatients during their hospital stay.

The toolkit covers audits, staff and patient surveys, training ideas, people to collaborate with in a hospital and how to develop a mouth care improvement plan.

Mili Doshi, Clinical Lead for MCM says – “We frequently get asked for guidance on improving mouth care in hospitals, ‘where to start?’, ‘how to collect the evidence that mouth care needs to improve?’. We wanted to create a legacy document sharing what we have learned over the last few years. We hope that the toolkit helps others, who can use or modify all or part of it.”

The toolkit can adapted to meet the governance standards of your organisation.

The toolkit can be found here, for more resources please visit our resources page here

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As part of our work with trusts in England, care resistant behavior was the number one barrier to providing mouth care.  We have  developed a video is to explain why a patient may be resistant towards mouth care, and some ways that may help manage this. This video is aimed at all health care professionals.

Covering techniques, use of distraction and products, we hope after watching this video you will have picked up many new tips towards delivering better care, to a patient who may at first be resistant to mouth care.

To view the video click on the link below or click Here to view via YouTube.

There are also a wide range of videos available on our resources tab, click Here to view them.

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To you we will be offering:

• A one-day training programme with a train-the-trainer approach, This will equip individuals with the skills and knowledge to enable them to start to implement an oral health improvement programme within their wards and Trust or organization. 
• A range of digital Mouth Care Matters training resources and presentations (to be shared post training)
• An audit tool set to measure quality improvement.  These can be used by the Trust to measure changes in practice and will need to go through the individual Trust governance programme.
• Support from the Mouth Care Matters’ network.

This day is ideal for all clinical staff who are in a position to make change in their trust, eg Nurses, Dental Nurses Speech and Language therapists, Practice Educators, Specialist Nurses other Allied Health Care Professionals.

The day is free of charge, however we do advise that you gain support from a senior level prior to attending the Train the Trainer day as we have found that this helps when implementing change in your trust.

Your commitment to this would be:

• Commitment to the one-day training.
• Subsequent roll-out of training to your Trust with completion of post training audits.
• Engagement with the Mouth Care Matters’ network.

Spaces will be offered on a first come first served basis, Due to limited space we will accept a maximum of two people from each trust to the training day.

If you have any questions or are interested in rolling out Mouth Care Matters at your trust, please send your expression of interest to mouthcarematters.lase@hee.nhs.uk no later than close of play Friday 25^th October 2019.

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People with a neuro-disability are more susceptible to problems with their mouths and providing oral care can sometimes be challenging.

Ten factsheets are available covering the following topics:

Supporting people with a neuro-disability to maintain good oral health

Cleaning the mouth of an adult with a Neuro-Disability

Dry mouth in adults with a neuro-disability

Lip and tongue biting in people with a neuro-disability

Oral Hypersensitivity

Reduced saliva control in adults with a neuro-disability (drooling)

Care-resistant behavior towards mouth care in people with a neuro-disability

Mouth care for people with Huntington’s disease

Safe Oral Suctioning in Adults with a Neuro-disability

Denture care for adults with a neuro-disability

Each factsheet covers the key points and also provides practical information on how to support people to maintain a clean and comfortable mouth.

You can view the factsheets online or download them by following the above links.

For further information, please contact the dental team at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability at dental@rhn.org.uk.

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Did you know that dental issues are one of the most common symptom groups for callers to NHS 111, particularly at weekends.

Many patients visiting emergency departments could be managed by other services including community pharmacies.

The HEE Dental and Pharmacy teams across London and the South East (LaSE) have collaborated to produce a series of dental factsheets for community pharmacy use.

The factsheets are intended to support and refresh knowledge and be used as a learning aid for all patient-facing staff in pharmacy when faced with a patient who presents with a common dental problem. These factsheets will help community pharmacy teams manage urgent dental and oral symptoms and advise where to signpost patients to other services where indicated. 

All factsheets can be viewed here on our resources tab, or downloaded here either individually or as a complete set and printed out for your staff to use.

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This video highlights the importance of implementing programmes like MCM to improve an individual’s overall health and wellbeing.

Betty is like a lot of patients admitted to hospital across the country; very proud of her teeth and mouth. Following an unplanned admission, Betty’s oral health deteriorated.

Sometimes the focus of care for patients in hospital is centered on the reason for admission.  MCM highlights the importance of holistic care, putting the mouth back into the body and remembering to include mouth care and a mouth care assessment as part of patient’s basic care.

Click here to access a wide range of Mouth Care Matters resources.

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This video shows the links between oral health and general health and is aimed at health care professionals and carers whose roles involve supporting people with mouth care.  The resource shows how poor oral health can lead to a number of health conditions and why maintaining good oral health has a positive impact on general well-being.  This video can be used as part of oral health training.  

For other Mouth Care Matters videos, please click here to see our resources section.

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The Royal College of Nursing Congress is where nursing staff meet to learn, develop and share nursing practice and to influence nursing and health care policy.

The team have welcomed so many delegates to the stand to share their passion for mouth care for patients.  The team also presented to a well attended seminar highlighting that it is essential that oral healthcare is carried out for all inpatients with a stay of more than 24 hours.  The importance was highlighted by real life experiences of patients we have met through the duration of our project.

It’s been a pleasure meeting so many wonderful nurses over the last few days.

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