Audio Recording

Shift Happens! Changing Paradigms in Oral Health Risk Assessment
Jo-Anne Jones


We need to be vigilant in our continual assessment of risk to better enable us to manage disease and more importantly, prevent disease. The incorporation of risk assessment into today’s dental practice is exciting and rewarding — replacing routine dental care with patient-centered risk assessment and disease prevention. This changing paradigm presents many challenges. First, we once thought we could identify those in our patient population at risk, now we are faced with lifestyle behaviors that present an entire new challenge to patient care. Secondly, fast food, fast lives and changing sexual behaviors have a profound impact on oral health and carry a critical message to our professional community. Thirdly, we must find ways to tap into internal motivation effectively with today’s dental patients and help them understand the element of risk and accept the appropriate preventive treatment recommendations. Motivational Interviewing (MI) has become widely recognized as an effective means of counseling and is now being successfully integrated into health care and dentistry. Discover how tapping into the internal motivation of your patient and delivering a message with impact can re-energize your practice and empower your patients to desire optimal oral health!

Learning objectives:
Participants will be able to:

• Understand the risk factors associated with fast food, fast lives and changing sexual behaviours that contribute to the diseases we are committed to preventing and managing; Periodontal disease, caries and oral cancer.
• Emerge empowered with new, alarming and critical information to immediately implement into clinical practice.
• Be equipped with resources and tools to complement our day to day practice.
• Discover new and effective strategies to uncover internal motivators of our dental patients.