Published on: 9 June 2021

IMG-20210525-WA0001.jpgAs part of The Older Person’s Improvement Collaborative (TOPIC), a piece of work has taken place between Heather Waldron (Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist) and Christine Kelley (End of life facilitator, Sunderland) to raise awareness of the importance of mouth care for all patients, in particular those at the end of life.

An audit of current mouthcare practice was carried out on the adult inpatient wards at Sunderland Royal Hospital in December 2020. This highlighted gaps in knowledge of nursing staff regarding what products are available to maintain oral hygiene as well as variability in delivery of mouth care and support given to families and carers about mouth care across different wards. Many staff felt that there was a need for the development of a patient information leaflet to advise families and carers about how to ensure patients mouths are kept clean and comfortable.

As a result of these findings, the following resources have been agreed through consultation with the End of Life Steering Group and the Therapies Clinical Governance Group in order to support staff.

Hospital staff can order the following mouth care products via the normal supplies ordering process. Community staff should consult their community pharmacy teams to order the products.

For further information about how to deliver good mouth care at the end of life please refer to the video below.

If you want to know more about TOPIC - please click here.

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