Gerodent

Gerodent is an oral healthcare programme that provides customised mobile preventive and curative oral care in nursing homes in East and West Flanders. It is also an educational platform for dental and oral hygiene students and dental assistants. In terms of research, Gerodent offers opportunities to collect scientific data to optimise mobile oral care and formulate policy recommendations.

Em. prof. dr. Jacques Vanobbergen and em. prof. dr. Luc De Visschere were the initiators. Prof Barbara Janssens soon joined the team as a third dentist.

Objectives

• Identify potential oral health problems in residents of nursing homes at an early stage
• Assess risks to optimal oral health
• Identify treatment needs, draw up individualised oral care plans and multidisciplinary implementation of necessary care
• Organise training and refresher courses for staff at nursing homes
• Provide education to future oral health professionals
• Conduct research to structurally integrate services and related initiatives into the healthcare system

Dental Public Health

Every nursing home that is part of the Gerodent care pathway signs a cooperation agreement with University Hospital Ghent. The agreement comes about when the nursing home is committed to implementing the oral care model under the guidance of the Gerodent team.

Prevention

The oral care model emphasises prevention, so the nursing home commits to permanently integrating oral care into daily care. To this end, the nursing home must, among other things, set up an oral care team. Gerodent can offer tailor-made training and guide nursing homes in the implementation process.

Two-yearly visit

Gerodent visits the nursing home twice a year (4 to 6 days a year). Even then, the focus is on prevention. We perform the necessary curative actions at convention rates. We transport the necessary material with a van. We unload it on arrival and set it up in a suitable room of the nursing home.

Research

Flemish research

The first research was conducted by Prof Luc De Visschere in Flanders (2002-2008) as part of a PhD with Prof Jacques Vanobbergen and Prof Cees de Baat as supervisors. This PhD showed that the oral care and oral hygiene of older adults in Flemish nursing homes was unacceptable.

Major causes of substandard oral health were:

• the lack of a structured oral care policy
• limited knowledge and insufficient skills of caregivers in nursing homes
• insufficient professional support from dentists

Furthermore, the boards of nursing homes appeared to be asking for continued support from dental care professionals.

In consultation with the intramural sector, a participatory model was developed to structurally integrate daily oral care in the daily care in nursing homes. The model envisaged that a team of dental care professionals would come to support nursing homes on an ongoing basis.

This was the immediate reason to start Gerodent and introduce a new way of providing care in Flanders in which dental professionals give preventive and curative oral care to older people in their own living environment.

Belgian research

In 2010, the findings of this Flemish study were confirmed for Belgium by the Federal Pilot Project 'Persons with Special Needs', commissioned by the Riziv. Besides the oral health of frail older adults, the oral health of persons with disabilities was also found to be substandard.

Further research and launch of Mondzorglijn

In 2017, Prof. dr. Barbara Janssens showed in her doctoral research that Gerodent succeeds in greatly reducing the treatment needs of older adults in nursing homes and that the knowledge and attitude of caregivers is moving in the right direction.

This oral care model developed at Ghent University was also applied in the Feasibility Study and, in 2017, the model was adapted by the Flemish Institute of Oral Health and used as a methodology in the preventive project Mondzorglijn.

The Mondzorglijn came about thanks to funding from the Flemish Ministry of Health and Welfare and is supported by Gezond Leven. The aim is to improve the oral health of frail and care dependent older adults in nursing homes by using process counsellors to introduce a preventive oral care policy.

Subscribing to Gerodent

Due to labour market shortages, we are unable to expand our team sufficiently. As a result, we cannot make any new cooperation agreements for the time being.

However, you can still have your nursing home added to our waiting list. If the opportunity to cooperate presents itself, you will receive the necessary information well in advance. Only then will you decide whether you effectively want to join. In the meantime, you can get started yourself with the Mondzorglijn script. If you have any questions, please email gerodent@uzgent.be or info@gezondemond.be.

To have your nursing home put on the waiting list, send the following details to gerodent@uzgent.be:

• name nursing home
• address nursing home
• telephone number
• e-mail address
• name of management
• capacity of the nursing home

Team

Steering Committee

• UH Gent: prof. dr. Eric Mortier, prof. dr. Koenraad Vandewoude, Omer Van Hautte
• Head of Department of Dental, Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases: Sofie De Turck
• Administrative logistics manager: Davy Van Stevendaal
• Gerodent coordinator: Prof. dr. Barbara Janssens
• Head nurse: Dominique Couckuyt

Team

• Manager-coordinator: Prof. dr. Barbara Janssens
• Staff assistant: Em. Prof. dr. Luc De Visschere
• Administration: Els Van Keirsbilck
• Dentists: Jonas Beckx, Marc Capiau, Evelien De Scheemacker, drs. Lynn Janssens, An Vermeyen, Luc Verstraeten
• Oral hygienists: Emilie Morel, Ruth Sederel, Matilde Standaert
• Dental assistants: Aïcha Baza, Lies Coppens, Sarie Vanhauwaert