Collaboration & Advocacy
Collaboration with Dental Professionals
Get to know your local dental health professionals and develop relationships that promote collaboration. Common areas of collaboration include:
- Referrals for routine and emergency care
- Pain management
- Medically complicated patients
- Anticoagulation
- Antibiotic prophylaxis
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Patient & Community Advocacy
Health care professionals can be powerful advocates for oral health in patients and communities. Promote the following:
- Improved access to care
- Prevention of oral disease
- Community water fluoridation
- Safety and injury prevention
In addition, clinicians should be aware of the following issues and support improvements at both the local and systems levels.
- Many patients who have private health insurance lack dental insurance—be sure to ask
- Medicaid may cover dental care, but relatively few dentists accept Medicaid insurance.
- Free care clinics increase access, but have limitations including poor continuity.
- Rural areas often face dental health professional shortages.
- There continues to be a nationwide shortage of dentists comfortable treating children under age three.
Apply Your Knowledge
The cases in this course are an opportunity to apply concepts that have been or will be covered in the subsequent slides. Cases can help guide your learning.
Note: Case responses do not count toward your module score.
If interested in Interprofessional Education (IPE) or Interprofessional Practice (IPP), please click the link below for additional resources.