Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT) Deputized to Informal Caregivers: Go or No Go?

Objective: Investigating the usability of the Dutch version of the Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT-NL) with informal caregivers of community-dwelling older people with suspected dementia, without specific training.

Materials And Methods: In accordance with guidelines for establishing the cultural equivalency of instruments, the OHAT was translated into Dutch. Fifteen informal caregivers of community-dwelling older people with suspected dementia and, as a reference standard, a dentist assessed the oral health of the older people using the OHAT-NL. The caregivers' scores were compared with the dentist's scores. The usability of the OHAT-NL was rated on a 10-point scale (0 = incomprehensible, and 10 = very user friendly) and investigated further through short structured interviews.

Results: There were differences between the dentist's and caregivers' assessments of the individual categories of the OHAT-NL. The specificity of the need to visit an oral health care professional was 100.0%, while the sensitivity was 78.6%. The informal caregivers concluded that the tool made them more aware of different aspects of oral health. The tool was rated with a mean score of 7.7 (SD 1.7).

Conclusion: The OHAT-NL could be a useful tool for informal caregivers without specific training to indicate whether the person they care for should visit an oral health care professional.