Improving dental treatment outcomes through direct communications between deaf patients and student dentists: SQUIRE report on a UMDP deaf dental care initiative

In 2014, the UW1 Mona School of Dentistry (UWI MSOD)
identified the Jamaican Deaf community as an underserved
population with regards to the provision of dental care.
The response of the School was to design and implement an
intervention programme through its public dental clinic, UWI
Mona Dental Polyclinic (UMDP), bolstered by the 2006 UNCRPD and CARICOM Declaration of Petion Ville in 2013. A protocol was created that covered all aspects of clinical operations for deaf patients, from infrastructure to patient care. UMDP has been running a Deaf Clinic since 2014. Now, seven years later, is an opportune time to review its processes and share an improved model for a dental Deaf Clinic with other
healthcare institutions. The SQUIRE Explanation and Elaboration paradigm was chosen as the analytic framework for the review. Our findings were that the student dentists experienced affective learning and came to value treating Deaf patients using direct communication in sign language. Another finding was that changes had to be made with regards to scheduling and communicating with patients about appointments. Additionally, the electronic patient records management system which was included in the intervention plan is not yet on stream and a low technology plan had to be created. The intervention achieved its primary goals
of improving dental health and creating a culture of good oral hygiene practices among the Jamaican deaf population. The evidence indicates that sign language competence of healthcare practitioners does indeed improve treatment outcomes and the quality of healthcare received by deaf patients. This valuable outcome of the intervention makes it worthy of duplication across CARICOM. This chapter describes and evaluates this intervention with an aim to providing a template for other health facilities regionally and internationally.