Individual Behaviour Change Support

Individual Behaviour Change Support is part of meeting P 3.3. For dental nurses, this means being able to support patients and colleagues and to work within practice systems while staying within your professional scope.

Health promotion involves more than handing out leaflets. Delivering Better Oral Health and NICE guidance recommend evidence-informed preventive messages, consistent behaviour-change approaches and routine oral health promotion in practice.

What to notice in practice

• Motivation: ask what the patient or colleague needs next, then hand over or escalate clearly.
• Confidence: ask what the patient or colleague needs next, then hand over or escalate clearly.
• Habits: ask what the patient or colleague needs next, then hand over or escalate clearly.
• Readiness: ask what the patient or colleague needs next, then hand over or escalate clearly.
• Small steps: ask what the patient or colleague needs next, then hand over or escalate clearly.

Dental nurses can reinforce preventive messages, make advice understandable, recognise when advice is unrealistic for a patient and report where practice systems hinder prevention.

Good practice is practical and observable: prepare, listen to patients and colleagues, check understanding, hand over clearly and raise recurring problems so the practice can learn from them.

Research and system context

Health promotion delivers health gain when advice is evidence-based, realistic, repeated consistently and accessible to the patient.