A Preliminary Study Structured Health Education Programme by Peer Educators as an Alternative Way to Maintain The Dental and Oral Hygiene of School Age Children Nopi Nur Khasanah (a*); Arlina Nurhapsari (b); Iskim Luthfa (a)
a) Faculty of Nursing Science, Islamic University of Sultan Agung, Semarang 50112
*nopi.khasanah[at]unissula.ac.id
b) Faculty of Dental Medicine, Islamic University of Sultan Agung, Semarang 50112.
Abstract
Dental and oral hygiene has become a problem in Indonesia, particularly among school age children. Nurses, as health professionals, can contribute to preventing the problem. Health education, by peer educators, can be an alternative way of delivering the importance of dental and oral hygiene to school age children because they are in the concrete operational stage of development where their relationships with friends are predominant. The objective of this study was to differentiate between the control and treatment groups the Oral Hygiene Index-Simplified (OHIS) was used. Structured-health education by peer educators was given to the treatment group. In contrast, health education in unstructured way was given to the control group. This is a quantitative research using a pre-experimental intact group comparison design. Dental and oral hygiene observation used the OHIS index that was checked by dentists. A dental check up was carried out on children who had mixed teeth (baby milk and permanent teeth), which was done by checking the incisors and molars 1 tooth. A purposive sampling technique was used to collect the 40 respondents for each group. Students who were chosen as peer educators received training about the right time and correct way to brush teeth by pediatric nurse specialists using demonstration media and a module. Moreover, they received spiritual training regarding thaharah from local Ustad. The median score on the OHI-S index for the treatment group was 0.9964 (good hygiene) with a range of 0.8372 1.1555 with a 95% confidence interval (CI). The analysing result of the OHI-S difference used the Mann-Whitney test with the p-value of 0.000 (<0.001), which means that there was a significant difference between the control and the treatment group. There is a significant difference on the OHI-S index between the treatment and control group after intervention. The peer educator method and structured health-education approach is a good combination, which provides a suitable alternative way of improving the knowledge of school age children and creating a situation of mutual support among them in order to maintain good dental and oral hygiene.
Keywords: Children, dental and oral, DMFT/def-t, OHI-S, peer
