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Disgust and attitudes towards inpatient oral care

Johnson, Ilona, Treasure, Elizabeth and Smith, Andrew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8805-8028 2013. Disgust and attitudes towards inpatient oral care. Presented at: BSODR 2013 British Division Meeting, Bath, England, 9 Sep 2013.

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Abstract

Objective: Poor quality oral care in hospitals is well documented. Emotional disgust has been associated with hygiene behaviours. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between student nurses' experiences of disgust, their attitudes towards oral care and intended oral care behaviours for patients in hospital. Method: The study was conducted in two stages. Firstly, student nurse participants (n=248) completed a self-report questionnaire for emotions and intended behaviours towards seven oral care scenarios. The questionnaire was developed and tested in advance of the study. Participants also completed established disgust sensitivity questionnaires and attitudinal questions. Secondly, a subset of participants (n=38) completed computer administered Implicit Association Tests. These measured response times for sorting emotional words and oral care images. Data were analysed in SPSS with Spearman’s rank-order correlation and Mann-Whitney U tests. Result: Participants expressed positive attitudes towards oral care and the majority (89%) agreed that oral care was a priority. Intended oral care varied for each scenario. For the most unpleasant scenario, 75% of participants were extremely disgusted with not providing oral care. Participants who strongly associated oral care scenarios with disgust reported greater disgust towards cleaning the mouth (U=201.5, p=0.02). Disgust towards brushing teeth was associated with avoidant behaviour. Conclusion: Student nurses with positive attitudes and intentions can experience disgust towards oral care; this can be an implicit subconscious experience. Although not providing care oral evokes disgust, student nurses may avoid oral care tasks for patients with unpleasant oral conditions, which can result in inadequate care for those who need it most. The emotion of disgust may be more useful than attitudes for explaining oral care failures in hospitals.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Dentistry
Last Modified: 07 Feb 2023 02:26
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/109601

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