Fones Model Of Dental Hygiene

In order to develop a dental hygiene public health program, a dental hygiene most evaluate past programs and find a model or paradigm that he/she is going to use to effectively assist the target population. There are four program planning paradigms that can be used:
1. Fones’ model for prevention on disease: Fones strongly believed that prevention was the key to help those in need, especially children through the school system. He stated that children were suffering from caries that was a preventable disease.
2. The logic model: it can be as a tool to plan or evaluate a program. It starts by finding the resources, then identifying the programs or strategies and determining the effect on the communities, and measuring the results.
3. The PRECEDE-PROCEED model: it focus on a change process that focuses on outcome. First, the final result or outcome is identified. Next, the factors that stand in the way of achieving the result and the ways to change those factors are identified. Then a program is implemented to obtain the desirable outcome. Following the implementation, it is important to determine if the process used to achieve the goal is being followed and if it is effective.
4.
The comprehensive plan: it is to evaluate state organization and policies. There are seven steps that are used to form a committee that will determine the goals and the resources, then it will plan and conduct assessment to collect data. This data is evaluated and used to plan programs, advocate for new policies, or for education.
The steps of the dental hygiene process of care are used as paradigm by dental hygienists when planning dental health programs. The steps in the process of care
are:
1. Assessment phase. When a hygienist see a patient for the first time she/he collects all the information needed to determine the patient oral health, the factors that are influencing the patient’s health, and risk factors for the patient and the dental treatment. In the same way when planning for a program the population needs are assessed through surveys, examining existing data, or doing dental screenings. Other factors such as existing resources, funding needed and workforce available are determined.
2. Dental hygiene diagnosis. During this step, a dental hygienist identifies needs, and prioritizes the needs in order or severity, with the help of the patient. While developing a program the data collected during assessment will give a clear picture of the target population needs and this will help in making plan to address those needs, which is the next step.
3. Planning. With the needs identifies and prioritizes the hygienist provide the patient with a plan that will help meet those needs in coherent and effective way. When planning a program, this step will help determine goals, objectives, and ways to measure the efficiency of the program. Also, the exact interventions are stablished and how the program will get its funding.
4. Implementation. During this stage interventions are done. For example some of the procedures a dental hygienist may do are SRP by quadrant, give oral hygiene instruction to the patient, give referral for any other need outside the scope of practice of the dental hygienist, and use subgingival irrigation. A dental health program will star operating at this point, by putting into practice all the strategies that were planned.
5. Evaluation is essential for dental hygienist to make sure the interventions were effective. If this is not the case, new interventions are considered and implemented. Evaluation is an ongoing process. This will allow the program conclude its success and guarantee that it works.
6. Documentation. Patients’ records are a legal document and everything must be documented in here to safeguard both the patient and the hygienist. For a dental health program the documentation will help determine the success or the failure of the program. This is important because if the goals and objectives are not achieved the program might not receive the funding to keep operating.