Affiliations 

  • 1 Centre for Community Health Studies (ReaCH), Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 School of Human Science, Faculty of Science, The University of Western Australia, 6009 Perth, Australia
Int J Integr Care, 2021 09 15;21(3):10.
PMID: 34611460 DOI: 10.5334/ijic.5952

Abstract

Introduction: The diabetes mellitus-periodontitis relationship has advocated several strategic management approaches on effective glycaemic control and oral health improvement for diabetic patients and periodontitis patients with diabetes. We aimed to identify the challenges of providing health education to patients with diabetes and/or periodontitis among healthcare professionals and needs for an integrated nutrition-oral health education module.

Methods: This study involved semi-structure in-depth interview with fifteen healthcare professionals from a training hospital focused on: (i) the existing issues and challenges encountered while managing patients for their nutrition and care and (ii) issues related to the current practice among healthcare professionals. Details pertaining to the participants' verbal and non-verbal responses were recorded, transcribed ad verbatim and analysed using themes codes.

Results: Patients' attitude and behaviour, language barriers and prioritising time were found as the common problems with patients, while limited knowledge on the relationship between diabetes-periodontitis, limited availability of appropriate and cultural-based health educational tools, lack of inter-professional multidisciplinary collaboration in managing patients, and constrains in time as well as costly therapy were common issues in the current practice.

Conclusions: Cost-effective efforts must be focused on overcoming these issues besides emphasizing the needs on developing an integrated module to achieve better management outcomes.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.