Clinic Simulation Day

So today is the day that I'm supposed to pretend that I'm a real hygienist in a dental office who sees more that two patients per day. Of course, this morning I happened to have my most difficult patient i've ever seen in the chair: and only a class III. I worked on her all morning pulling, adapting, contacting, and removing as much of that concrete hard calculus as possible. I was very stressed and getting pretty tired. Luckily Professor Alexander must have been feeling rather gracious because she came over and helped me one on one get each spot of calculus that had been causing me grief. I got her done! 2 quads class III along with the curved slimline ultrasonic PE, and 6 injections: 2PSA, 2MSA, ASA, and Professor Perry showed me how to perform an Infraorbital nerve block (don't worry, just one of my most feared injections... but it went well and was actually pretty easy!)

This afternoon I'm supposed to have a new patient in at 12:30 who of course still isn't here but still hasn't given me a difinitive answer as to whether or not he'll be coming... Luckily I have a class V coming in at 1:30 so I won't have a completely empty afternoon... however, that also means that I can't see the extra patient out in the waiting room. ...LAME

LA Mockboard/class IV!!!

This morning the Local Anesthesia mockboard went so well, I got a 90% on the written and I did a "textbook" PSA injection according to Professor Alexander. I did fail the IA, but that was because I didn't wait for the examiners to say "proceed" and I stupidly said "at site of deposition" while swinging the syringe to place it over the premolars. Yeah, I'm a dork... oh well, I'm glad I did it now and not in two weeks during the real thing!

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE WREB AND NATIONAL BOARD EXAMINATIONS JUST TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY! I'M FREAKING OUT A LITTLE HERE...

This afternoon was a normal clinic day, I had a class IV patient with special needs and a few health issues. I don't really understand why the first year instructor who gave this patient to me on Monday made such an emphasis on how difficult this patient would be. This class IV was a lot easier to deal with than my last class IV, except I had to work around the N2O nose piece and the patient's rather large tongue and small mouth. It was a good experience, I only missed one spot! Here's to rejuvenating my confidence in my own clinical skills... hopefully I can maintain this positive outlook through the end of school.

Final day of my 5 week VA spree!

So this morning, was uneventful in the eyes of a dental hygiene STUDENT but rather busy in the eyes of a HYGIENIST. I had 4 quads of a class V again with BWX and a pano, pretty easy, light, supragingival calculus... nothing too exciting. However, my patient forgot to premedicate so we had to wait an hour before I could scale him. He also had a handful of health flags like insulin-dependent type II diabetes, angina pectoris, asthma, COPD, sleep apnea, joint replacement, atrio-septal defect, congestive heart failure, and the list went on. I had to make sure he took his premed, had his inhaler, ate breakfast and took his insulin, and that he had some nitroglycerin with him just in case. I also couldn't lay him back all the way nor could I use the ultrasonic so it took a little while to get him all finished. Otherwise this appointment would have been pretty quick and uneventful. Good experience for me, I needed an opportunity to deal with a pretty full health history.

THE LAST MOCKBOARD!!!! Thank Heavens!!!

Well, there you have it, my last mockboard finished and done. I didn't even have a patient until 3 days ago when Natalie Burghardt called me to say she found one! I happened to be in the building so I was able to take x-rays that same day. Today my mockboard was in the afternoon which I think helps me do better because I get the morning to calibrate my exploring to the professors and examiners. It was a very good experience to clean that quad. She was a class III but I still scaled her rather quickly. The calculus was the type that just melts and oozes off when you hit it with a powerful ultrasonic, but underneath there are little highly calcified rocks of calculus that you have to go back and do a very deep and thorough hand scale to remove after. I was concerned because the patient had a rough CEJ that could have felt like calculus and her tissues looked very loose and kind of beaten up (but it was from her oral health status, not my scaling technique). I thought I might get docked for missed "CEJ" calculus and tissue trauma but I didn't. I actually didn't miss a single spot!!! I'm so excited to have the last mockboard done and I'm actually kind of excited for the real Boards. All I can say for now is WREB: Bring it on!!! I'm ready for you!!! (except the written parts... :) Good luck to everyone with the LA mockboards next week!!!

Another VA day

Today, I didn't have a pt. until 9:30AM, there was the random pt that was going to try to show up for just basic polishing and debridement at 8AM. (boring, but oh well, at least it keeps him healthy). Of course, he didn't show, so I had a long boring morning of waiting. To make things even less eventful, everyone else had easy patients and didn't need charting so I restocked some random supplies for everyone (so much fun! ...I wish I could get CA credit).
At 9:30, my patient finally showed up needing a maxillary impression for a night guard, 4 BWX, and a good thorough cleaning. The impression had to be done twice because the first one didn't get enough of the anterior teeth, but Sharrah helped me get the second one done right. Then my BWX had some issues since my pt. coudn't bite down very well on the right side. The patient actually ended up being a class II! I got my class II/V done today!!! Yay! I just need to find those blasted III's! The doctor came in and said he needed to be scheduled to get his wisdom teeth out and one small cavity filled. Then we had to wait until the periodontist had some time to come look at the pt. to evaluate him for a possible mandibular anterior gingival graft (same surgery I had last year... poor guy!)
My afternoon patient was a class III that I had seen in January and scheduled to come back on my day. He's a very good pt. He just fell asleep and let me do the cleaning. It also helped that I was able to numb him and therefore the cleaning was smooth and easy for him and me. I like it when appointments work out like that.

Mockboard #2: PASS!!!

Woo hoo!!! I'm not a complete failure! Granted, my patient wasn't really qualified to be a board patient but she still did have a good amount of calculus and deposit that I had to clean off. I only missed one spot! And my patient was so sweet, she was seriously a joy to work on! It's nice to have a little ego boost every once and a while.

VA Day- Oh My Jaw!

This isn't the one that I saw, but pretty close to it. (For those of you who don't know about ONJ, that brown lumpy thing the arrow is pointing to is a large, exposed area of infected, necrotic bone from the jaw! Yuck! Super cool though when you're odd like me and my fellow hygiene students!

This morning I had a very pleasant patient with class II periodontitis but that wasn't the real excitement of the morning. Diane had a patient with Osteoradionecrosis of the Jaw! ONJ! I never expected to actually see that in real life but there ya go! It was in the right mandibular retromolar pad and was about 10x7MM! The patient was also really neat, he let each one of us students and even Professor McConaughy come in and take a look! It was so cool!!!