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.

Done

I finished the last quad on my class three pt today. I took me the whole entire clinic time. Her calculus is so hard. In one spot on the distal of #2 I couldn't get it off so I asked a 2 year student who is a TA for help. She couldn't get it so I asked Prof. Costley for help. She helped me get a little but we still couldn't get it all. When Instructor Hafen did my scale check I told her about it and she tried and said it was "concrete." We ended up having to leave it because it wouldn't come off. It was crazy. I am done with all my clinic requirements now.
On a different not my dad was buried yesterday in a military cemetery clear down by the point of the mountain. The service was short and then we spent much of the rest of the day with family from out of town. I was nice to get to know some of my relatives better. I am not really sure what to write about my feelings, but I feel like I am coping a little better each day and slowly moving on.

Rough Day

My father passed away late Saturday night. I thought that I was dealing with everything ok and that my crying was over. However, when I went to tell professor Costley I couldn't hold back the tears. I wasn't sure when the burial was going to be and Ryan (my brother) had said probably on Wednesday. Because I might not be there for the last day of clinic I asked Prof Costley to come in a watch me pass off my last three PE's because the instructors on Mondays are always short on time. She said she would be happy too and told me that I could go home if I wanted and that I didn't have to come all week. I figured it best to stay rather than go home and sulk. I cleaned two quads on my class III pt today. I missed a bunch of spot though. Other than the fact that I passed off some PE's it was a really rough day. The funeral ended up being tonight. My dad didn't look like himself laying there. It was nice to hear some of the things that people had to say about him. His burial is scheduled for tomorrow. Today was a really rough day. Dad I will miss you!

I quad of Class III

My class III came agian today. I was able to retake the needed x-rays, do a complete OD and scale 1 quad. She has very tenacious calculus. It is so tough. Her health history said she has never been to the dentist. Instructor Hemsley did my scale check and she could not even get one of the places I missed because the calculus was just too hard. I passed off a couple PE's today so all I have left are three instrumentation PE's which I will do next week. I almost forgot. Kim Also let me take a full mouth this morning on her pt. That means I will meet my x-ray requirements for the semester.

ULTIMATE FRUSTRATION

My class III pt was supposed to come today. Clinic started at 8 and she didn't show. I and Mr. Salomon kept calling and calling and finally Mr. Salomon got a hold of her and got her to come in. She showed up at 10:15, pt walk out is 10:30. I took a full mouth on her with scan-x and at the end had a bunch of instructors in the x-ray room trying to help me get done because we were out of clinic time and there was a lady coming to present on ultrasonic scalers to our class. I was in such a rush. I didn't realize that I needed a FMX 20 template and not the 18. I clicked on the FMX 18 and scanned in my x-rays. Because I had filled the template two of the x-rays wouldn't fit and got lost. Mr. Salomon saved one but it was a duplicate of one I already had. I had no time to do retakes and was told I would have to do them at her next appointment. I gave my pt a talking to through her daughter who translated and told her that she had an infection in her mouth and that I had given her all of my last available appointments for the semester and that if the infection was not treated she could eventually loose teeth. I told her if she didn't come to her appointments she could not get back in until fall because we are closed in the summer. She understood and hopefully she will come next time. After the guest speaker I had to hang around and transfer all of the x-rays one by one into a FMX 20 template. What a pain. but it is set up now for me to finish the needed retakes next time. What a frustrating day.