nursing websites (long)

Well, perhaps we should start a thread called "why in the hell can't we get people's teeth brushed during final rounds?". I wish I had an answer for that one. It did not always get done when I was a tech, but oh how I tried, and oh the trouble if you are consistently getting out late. I developed a fairly speedy method by putting dentures in the denture cup and having a constant stream of water rinsing them while they were in the cup. Pulling out the plates one at a time and blasting them vigorously with the toothbrush. Brushing and rinsing at the same time. It was the best I could do. For those patients who would rather bite me than let me clean their dentures, well I don't know what to do about that. We had some biters. I can see perhaps third shift doing some of that, as I have worked some 3rd in LTC and they did bed-checks every 3 hours instead of every two. Pathetic, and hopefully this was one of the few that operated that way. I could run circles around any third shifter, and did so often. Any hallway. Any time. I do greatly appreciate your post. I think that an RN's answer to "why didn't the mouth care get done" would be "because the tech had poor time management/no routine". That's been my experience when I exercised my right to free speech in LTC. Are other types of units free from this kind of crap? no. I witnessed bad things in med-surg and finally in the ICUs. Fear of retribution for speaking up in the actual unit is what I'm getting at. It's a real risk. I realize this is a little different than my original post, but I just thought I would thrw something out there. I enjoy the discussion.

Thanks again for your post,

xtech64