The maintenance of quality of life, implies oral hygiene and oral health care; but this type of attention for long-term patients is still low, mainly because they are no longer able to perform hygiene due to lack of motor control or due to the limitations of the disease, depending, therefore, on the help of third parties. This critical issue becomes an important risk factor for ventilator-associated pneumonia due to the reduction of natural upper airway defenses, indicating the importance of a strategy for implementing a hygiene and oral care program based on clear evidences and protocols, to improve this reality through the training of a professional palliative care team, aiming at reducing both the mortality rates and the infection rates and the hospitalization time of this patient. The objective of this work, is to apply a dental hygiene training program to the nursing team and caregivers of a hospice hospital to raise awareness of the relevance of their role as providers of oral health care in identifying the conditions that may predispose a patient in need of mechanical breathing, to certain systemic conditions, mainly pneumonia. The project aims to formulate a comparison of the pneumonia rates, before and after the implementation of the training and calibration program of the oral hygiene prevention conduits and oral care, to be applied to the patients of this institution.
