Role of Oral Health Professional as Team Care for Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

India leads the world with largest number of diabetic patients and is termed as “Diabetes capital of the world.” Diabetes mellitus is a major public health problem with incidence rising rapidly at alarming rate. To reduce both the acute and chronic complications arising from diabetes, one needs to provide continuous, proactive, planned, patient-centered, and population-based care through team approach. Team care is the key component of health-care reform initiatives that incorporate an integrated health-care delivery system, especially those for chronic disease prevention and management. Team care can minimize patients' risks of diabetes by assessment, intervention, and surveillance to identify problems early and initiate timely treatment. Oral health-care professionals play an important role as part of the health-care team by providing oral care to patients with or at-risk for diabetes. Collaborative teamwork among dentists and other medical professionals calls for a new model of care, with the dentist playing a leadership role both internally, within the oral health profession, and externally, in relation to other health professions. The increasing focus of dentistry on team effort requires dentists to assume the role of team leader as they are in the front line of prevention, early detection, and treatment of both oral and systemic diseases, and are in a good position to provide screening, diagnosis, and referral services for systemic diseases. Team care is likely to play a major role in future health-care systems designed to provide comprehensive lifetime prevention and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes.