Anticipatory Guidance Provided to Parents about their Children's Oral Health A scoping review

Abstract

Background: Anticipatory guidance involves presenting developmentally appropriate health information that focuses on the child's oral health and related demands at a particular period of life through proactive parent-based counselling (Pinkham et al., 1999). It is one-to-one intervention by the dentist with the parent that teaches them how they can support their child’s proper development, particularly their oral health (Nowak and Casamassimo, 1995; Pinkham et al., 1999). It used by health care professionals help them to be a focus and follow up the child and the mother for each visit to review all topics that should be covered for specific age not just give information but to apply it. Aim: This research aimed to identify what the literature stated about the anticipatory guidance provided to parents about their children’s oral health. Method: A scoping review was designed to map the existing empirical studies that were talking about anticipatory guidance, using the framework established by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) and modified by Levac et al. (2010). This methodological framework required: identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, study selection and charting the data, followed by collating, summarising and reporting the results. Results: 43 peer-reviewed articles and six guideline documents were included in this project. Three themes were identified. The concept of anticipatory guidance has been identified differently in the literature and guidelines documents. Studies have been carried out to assess the effectiveness of anticipatory guidance intervention and it was found that the intervention had been effective. However, most of them record short-term effectiveness with no studies conducted to assess the long-term effectiveness of anticipatory guidance Conclusion: It can be concluded that the studies have been carried out in this area vague and confusing. The concept of anticipatory guidance is being confused cross the literature with no agreement on a defined definition.