Word of Mouth - School of Public Health and Community Medicine ...

APPENDIXcomputer, on the patient appointment list andthese are actual ... printed list. So just thedentist [has to] try and follow it. And to thevolunteers generally, it was suggested: If hehas to change a treatment plan or something,he should write there, why he changed thetreatment plan or why this one would be betterfor the patient and stuff like this. So yeah,from follow up from one dentist to another, Idon’t think there is a problem at all. There’s noproblem there.There were differing views on the potential ofcomputerising the dental records. One volunteerthought that each dentist’s ability to manage thecomputer record would be an obstacle. Anotherdescribed how the computerising of records intheir own practice had empowered their entireteam and everybody can read them. ‘Dental forWindows’ was promoted as being the simplestand as having many practical advantagesin terms of patient continuity and patientcommunication as well as staff communicationabout that patient. But for a practice likeWuchopperen, where patient practitioners arecoming and going all the time, that would be myrecommendation to them.At the population health level, there was somestrong advocacy for fluoride in the local watersupply:Cairns should have fluoride in the water supply.We just do not see that [level of decay] insuburban Melbourne and it doesn’t matter howcrappy your diet is you know, what you eat,you just don’t see the amount of decay thatyou see up in Cairns (Dental volunteer).One volunteer who had worked in Ireland toldof how the school program over there wouldgive out fluoride tablets, while doing routineeducation and work on oral hygiene.Oral health promotion was discussed with aheavy focus on the periodontal disease andtreating that as well suggested, through theinclusion of more hygienists and periodontists,in order to, look at the other side of the oraldisease … once we can start getting past theemergency work ... (Dental volunteer). Trainingstaff members in oral health promotion was alsomentioned often.One volunteer remarked that the down timebetween dental visits could be useful to do moreoral health promotion. She was not sure of howmuch training was there, but felt that it wouldbe very good if staff were trained to give dentalhealth advice to some of the other groups thatthey have in the health centre, e.g., antenatalclinics, or the youth group, or while people arewaiting for appointments, or the diabetic clinic –because they wait there for a long time [duringtesting]: It’s just something to sort of do a littlebit more prevention as well rather than jut fixingthings up when things have already gone wrong.Another volunteer also offered to do professionaleducation for staff, offering to do seminarsabout linking oral health to general health.One volunteer yearned for a little more aboutIndigenous culture:Just that whole experience of travelling upthere … it works really well. And I, even if therewas a little bit more, if we could learn a littlebit more about the Indigenous culture or abouttheir art or things like that , that would havebeen really good (Dental volunteer).Steering CommitteeSuggestions made by the Steering Committeeincluded:• [What we should really do] is explore thehygienists! Because that would deal with takingsome of the pressure off the dentists and dosome preventative work (Steering Committeemember).• More aggressive marketing plan: [S]o thatevery dentist in Australia knows about it,because they don’t, a very small percentageknow.• Better funding: [S[o they can have a betterorganizational set up with an office and itsfacilities [so that if people] look up the phonebook, find ‘Filling the Gap’ and ring them up,secretary answers the phone and tells themwhat the need to know (Steering Committeemember).86Word of Mouth