Abstract
Background: Oral health of elderly people is a global concern. Poor oral health in institutionalized elderly people has been attributed to poor knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of healthcare providers. However, no validated KAP tool is available yet. Objective: To develop and validate a tool to measure knowledge, attitude, and practice of healthcare providers in oral care of institutionalized elderly people. Methods: The development and validation of the tool was based on literature reviews, comments from professional experts, and statistical analytic methods. Content validity in the instrument psychometric property and its relevance with reliability are essential. Content validity ratio and content validity index were performed. Then, a pilot study was conducted in 20 institutionalized healthcare providers for testing applicability, feasibility, and reliability. Results: A total of 43 items were developed in three domains, knowledge (19 items), attitude (13 items), and practice (11 items). Content validity analysis revealed the KAP tool with high values of the I-CVI (score 1.00) and S-CVI (S-CVI/UA result 1.00). The test-retest reliability with Cronbach’s alphas of knowledge, attitude, practice, and overall KAP were 0.67, 0.93, 0.92, and 0.94, respectively. Conclusions: The developed and validated tool is appropriate to measure KAP of healthcare providers in oral care of institutionalized elderly people. It can be used to measure KAP of institutionalized healthcare providers in order to develop appropriate strategies to improve KAP of healthcare providers.
Highlights
Knowledge: Knowledge reflects how a healthcare provider understands the concept of oral health, oral problems, and related causes and symptoms, about oral care and its importance in oral health and general health considering oral and physical conditions of an elderly resident [10,19]
Attitude: Attitude is defined as a learned predisposition to think, feel, and act of a healthcare provider in a particular way towards an elderly resident who needs oral care
The search was limited to studies (1) published between years January 2011 and October 2020; (2) which are primary studies that examined knowledge, attitude, or practice of healthcare providers in oral care, (3) in which participants were elderly, (4) with abstracts available, and (5) which were written in English or Chinese through the electronic databases
Summary
Oral health in elderly has raised global concern [1]. Poor oral health is closely linked to deteriorated general health conditions that increase morbidity and mortality. Public Health 2021, 18, 4145 conditions may further deteriorate Other factors, such as degrees of cognitive function and self-care independence, can affect oral care practice among elderly people [6,7,8]. In Hong Kong, most elderly people with limited self-care ability due to physical and mental disabilities are arranged to long-term care institutions for continuous care [4,5] Their daily oral care may be dependent on institutionalized healthcare providers. Health behavior is determined by and contributed to certain practice Based on this model, oral care ability is determined by the level of knowledge and skills of healthcare providers.
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