All I want for Christmas

I am hoping that over this wonderful winter break that I don't loose my beginner skills of dental hygiene! I will be all by myself with a patient and a new chartless computer system! Yikes! I am a little scared that my time management may be a issue this coming spring semester. It should be interesting how this all will work out. I am going to enjoy my break tremendously! However I will be trying to learn axium and somehow keep sharp on my clinical skills. I may just ask Santa for the magical skills of a seasoned Hygienist! When I come back I will WOW everyone with my new loupes and my crazy skills!

Floss is the boss

I am excited that we are seeing patients with actually periodontal disease and things we have learned all about. I finally saw Material Alba, periodontitis, heavy plaque accumulation, and caries all on the same patient! I had my first experience with the cavitron! It was nice to use on the facial and buccal linguals. I had some hard times trying to see the rest of the mouth though with all of the water! All i kept thinking was to keep it moving and to use the sides as best as I could. I really did have a horrible time seeing though. I do plan on getting loupes but is that going to help? I dont really know how else to see past the water.
I also enjoyed showing a 70 year old patient how to floss. Believe it or not they told me they did not know how to floss. So it was pretty interesting that not everyone actually does know how to take care of their teeth. At 70 years old that is a long time to not know something like that! I am glad that at least I can make a difference in someone's health and try to get them on the right track. I think that maybe I assumed people do know how to do the basic steps like brushing and flossing. But everyone may not have had the same background or culture that teaches these things. I would really like to go to things like the MOM projects or Jamaica project maybe to teach others.

Patient's are not so patient

I finally saw my first patient and it was over all a great experience. Natasha and I worked together and actually finished our patient's appointment. I learned a lot during this first appointment. I wish that our patient would have been a little more patient because they were extremely vocal about not wanting to come back to finish and it made me feel very pressured. I wanted to be able to take my time but the way we were feeling is like we needed to finish. I do understand that people come to the school to get discounted prices on dental care, however they tend to skip out on fluoride and xrays because they don't want to spend the money. this is a little aggravating because our patient the other day really needed both done.

I really enjoyed the debridement and being able to help explain to our patient the importance of flossing and taking better care of their teeth. I thought I did an okay job scaling off the calculus but I guess I still had more to scale off once faculty checked. I used the air syringe to check and there definitely was more there that I had not seen. The probe is still scary to me because I cannot read the thing. I may just have to buy a $900 pair of loupes to be able to read the probe better! Those things are so over priced!

Our patient had also improved on their probing depth's since their last visit. It was good to see patients that have improved. I can only imagine a three hour appointment can be tiring and long. When we were done with our patient they jumped right out of the chair and was extremely ready to get out of there! I kind of felt like they were like that the whole time. So hopefully our next patient will be a little more calm and patient so I can feel like I am doing a good job and taking my time. The patient survey from that visit was rated an excellent though!