Special Needs

My patient this morning was a special needs patient that Eric had seen yesterday and refered to me because my patient canceled. She was somewhat mentally handicapped and had a caretaker. I found it to be a very different appointment because of her mental state. When she first opened her mouth she had plaque caked all over the quad that Eric had cleaned the day before. I asked her if she had brushed and she told me yes. I'm pretty sure she was lying. I've heard alot of mentally handicapped people will do that just like little kids do sometimes to avoid being in trouble. Anyway I used some dislosing agent on her and showed her all of the plaque. I then went over toothbrushing with her and taught her some ways to better access the areas she was missing. She was a very nice lady overall tihngs went well. This afternoon I saw my mockboard patient again and got two more quads done on her. It was a good day.

Clinic Assistant

Today was my day to be the clinic assistant at WSU. I was very frustrated in that I felt Mr. Solomon kept getting after me for things that he didn't need to. For example when I first showed up this morning I went and turned on the x-ray processors and ran the films through to test them. Then I got ready and started checking in patents. Mr. Solomon showed up and started getting after me for not filling the ultrasonic baths. I told him I was goin to go do it after I finished checking in patients. He gave me some speal about how it needed to be done first thing in the morning and to go do it now and he would finish checking in the patients. I thought that was needless because the ultra sonic bath is used as part of the process for cleaning instruments. No one would be using it for at least an hour since thier patients were just barely showing up, so why did he insisit that it be filled before I check in patients?... I think it is because he just wanted to prove who is the boss and excercise power over me. I was very irritated. Things like that kept happening throghout the day. But I guess this is just one of those hoops I have to jump throght on my way to graduation.

Mockboard

YEAH I PASSED!!!! We had mockboards today and I passed. My patient had very sensitive lower anteriors though and by the time I wnt to have the instructors check her her anesthesia had worn off and so they could not check those areas. Instructor Wold told me that there were three test sites on those lower anteriors that she couldn't check because the patient was too sensitive. She said she talked to Professor Alexander and that they had to coun't those three against me since they couldn't verify that I had gotten the deposit off and because part of the test was choosing the right patient. But I still passed even with those points missing. So the lesson for next time is choose a better patient.

Screenings

I learned a valuable lesson today in time management of screenings. I scheduled a bunch of people for screenings for mockboardsbut I had them too close together my fist patient was late and had a mor extensive health history which put me running behind the rest of the day. Next time I am going to give myself more time between patients.

Greed

The last two days I and many of the other hygiene students participated in the Women's Health Connection at a Midtown Clinic in Ogden. This is a non profit event that women can come to and get screened to determine what kind of health care needs they have. A case worker is then assigned to make sure that each woman receives the necessary care based on priority of their needs. Our job as hygiene students was to provide oral cancer screenings and determine who was highest priority for needing restorative dental work. This is an event that Weber State Dental Hygiene participates in every year and often many patients for the hygiene clinic are found though this event. Prior to the event our entire senior class had decided to pool all the patients we found and split evenly between all of the senior students. However during the event human nature set in and greed took over. I was quite upset when I found out part way through the day that most of the students had decided that they were no longer going to submit their patients to be divided up. Many of them had tried to make sure that they stayed in the same screening groups all day and were only going to split their names between their group. I however had been oblivious to this and had had many people rotate through my screening group who wrote down the names of many of the patients that I saw. So I didn't have those names and phone numbers even though I saw the patient. I hadn't cared because I thought that we were all sharing anyway. Yesterday I guess there were only seven Seniors there so those seven people got all of the names for the whole day which I believe they saw some where between 200-400 people. I am not sure exactly how many but I know it was a lot and that there is no way that those seven students will have time in their schedules to see all of the patients that came thought the Health Connection yesterday. I think the reason that this bothers me the most is that a small group of students were not able to gather names and numbers of patients because they were assigned to be in the halls to direct people to where we were doing the oral cancer screenings. Luckily for me I was not one of those people. I left the event with a list of names that had 11 people on it, I would have had more but like I said when I was seeing a patient usually their was someone writing for me and a bunch of people rotated through my group, so many of the names of the people I saw are on other people's lists. Still I feel pretty lucky to have 11 names some of the hall people may have only gotten 3 names, some students may not have gotten any. It just makes me so furious that the students who wrote down the most names are refusing to follow through with dividing up the patients like we had all originally agreed to . How would they feel if they had been assigned to the hall and left the event with no patient names? I feel like greed has turned a bunch of people in our class into jerks because there is no way that some of those students will be able to see all of the patients on their lists. There aren't enough clinic days. So I don't see why they can't pass those names on to the people who got few or none. That is my soap

Child's Play

Today I had one of the hardest appointments I have ever had in clinic. I saw a 6 year old boy who was very impatient and had a very strong gag reflex. After the cleaning I went to place sealants on his six year molars. I etched and then the tooth got contaminated with saliva because he closed down. So I grabbed a bite block and etched again. Then the boy felt like he was gaging sat up and spit my bite block on the floor. I then asked the clinic assistant Megan to help me. She suctioned and helped keep his mouth open. It took a lot of effort and a couple of more times etching, because he kept closing down, but we eventually were able to get the upper and lower 6yr molars on the pts. right side done. We tried to do the pts. left side but it was not working. We had etched twice and both times he gaged and closed down. He began crying and said he didn't want to do it anymore. His mom came over and talked to him but he was still not willing to let us seal the teeth. I told Professor Wold what was going on and that I just needed her to scale check so I could send him home. In the meantime the boys mom had got him distracted playing a video game on her phone. Professor Wold sat down to do the scale check and while the boy was distracted she rinsed, dried and sealed the two teeth. I asked her why she didn't re-etch because we were taught to always re-etch if the tooth got contaminated with saliva. She told me "sometimes you have to improvise." The teeth had already been etched twice so the enamel was slightly demineralized where the sealant was to be placed. I think it was wise of her to place the sealant even though she could not etch again because the worst that could happen is the sealant may come off. I think it will hold pretty well though. I guess we'll see next semester when they come back. I felt like this was a good learning experience for me because in real life following the "book answer" is not always practical; sometimes you have to adjust for the situation.

LET IT BEGIN

This week was the first official week of school. I went to the VA clinic on Tuesday. We spent most of the day going through clinic orientation. I was supposed to see a patient in the afternoon but when he showed up he had a new cold sore and I was told to have him rescheduled.
Today we had our first day of clinic at WSU. We practiced exploring on each other and passed off our instrument sharpening PE. Overall I feel like has been a good start to the semester.