Therapeutic patient education upon oral emergency hospital discharge: Which skills should be prioritized?

Oral health inequalities remain a major public health concern, particularly among vulnerable populations who experience reduced access to dental care and increased reliance on emergency services. In France, emergency dental consultations are more frequent than in other European countries, reflecting persistent barriers to preventive and routine oral healthcare. Existing educational interventions in emergency settings are often limited to information delivery and rarely rely on structured pedagogical frameworks. Although therapeutic patient education adapted to hospital discharge contexts (TPE-HD) has demonstrated effectiveness in improving self-care skills in acute settings, no structured oral health intervention based on this model has yet been developed. This study aimed to identify the priority educational needs of patients attending a hospital-based oral medicine emergency department in order to define the competencies targeted by a brief educational intervention. A Knowledge-Attitudes-Practices survey was conducted toward patients consulting for oral emergencies. Identified educational needs were then translated into operational competencies integrated into the educational intervention design. This work demonstrates how observed gaps (insufficient knowledge, inappropriate beliefs, and inadequate practices) can be transformed into actionable capabilities that patients may use to manage their oral health. Drawing on the principles of discharge education and the structured framework of therapeutic patient education, it highlights the relevance of using emergency visits as opportunities for health learning and behavioral change. It contributes to the literature by supporting the needed integration of structured educational care into oral emergency pathways to reduce inappropriate emergency utilization, improve continuity of dental care, and address oral health inequalities.