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February 06, 2007
Firing up patients' home care motivation
Reading the article "Firing up patients' home care motivation" by Carol A Jahn, RDH, MS, made a lot of good points for helping your patients get motivated for good OH. I thought she made a good point when she talked about promoting self-direction rather than telling the patient where they need improvement. If you ask the patient how they feel they are doing and get them to actually talk about it, most likely with some encouragement of honesty, they'll open up and really tell you what's going on. This will not only help the patient, but it will help us understand what is really important to them and go from there. Don't bombard them with tons of different things that could help them out but maybe one or two new things at each appointment. Giving them more than one or two things to try until the next appointment will probably overwhelm them and they most likely won't do it. I also thought it was a good idea to have a variety of products out rather than just one or two to choose from. These could be the products themselves, brochures, coupons, etc. It's good for them to actually see the product and touch it so they know how it works before purchasing it. Or if you show them some different brochures they have at least an idea what you are talking about and can visualize it. She also made a good point that as their looking at some of the different products, we can point out different one's that may be beneficial for their particular situation. This way they can pick and choose actual products that will really improve their oral health status. This article helped give me many pointers I can use to improve my OHI with my patients.
Jenny
Posted by jebrodie at February 6, 2007 09:50 AM
Comments
Nice posting, Jen. You identified 3 excellent key points from the article. As I read your posting I realize how much more interesting it will be to provide patient education using the key points you indentified here. Ms.Jahn has a thoughtful, workable approach to patient selfcare.
Posted by: poissant at February 6, 2007 11:21 AM
I agree with your point about patients being overwhelmed by too many new products. I think they would do more with one or two new things, because it seems realistic to them. If they have 8 new things, they won't know where to start!
Posted by: svelmer at February 6, 2007 04:20 PM
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