Patient Provider Communication in Oral Health

A patient who is not health literate may not be able to communicate with the provider about his/her oral health. Conversely, a provider or clinic staff member who is not linguistically or culturally competent or sensitive, or who cannot communicate in plain language may not be able to communicate with a patient. Health care settings tend to use specialized vocabulary, legal documents, complex procedures and processes, and involve differences in power or access to information, especially if patients are hindered due to illness, stress or fear. The American Dental Association recently stated that limited oral health literacy is a constraint to oral disease prevention and treatment, and resolved that the Council on Dental Education and Licensure “encourage the development of undergraduate, graduate…education programs to train dentists…to effectively communicate with patients with limited literacy skills” Unfortunately, the training content is not standardized and new dentists and dental staff may not get a comprehensive education in all facets of patient-provider communication. There are many barriers to effective patient-provider communication about oral health, not limited to the training that dentists receive. Providers rarely ask the patient to repeat back his/her instructions. Health Education materials in the dental office may be too difficult to read. This session will cover the barriers and facilitators for improving the effectiveness of oral health patient-provider communication. We will review the literature on patient-provider research and discuss the opportunities for interventions to improve the state of patient-provider communication in oral health.