Darn physician consults!

Well, today was pretty much a waste of a clinic day because my pt. had to have a physician consult and I couldn't get a hold of anyone so all I could do was the intra and extra oral screening. :( At least I know next time he comes back we are ready to scale. Hopefully Wednesday will be more successful.

Only one more appt. in Feb

We only have one more clinic day in February!! Yay! But also crappy at the same time because I feel so stressed about getting my requirements. Especially for radiology because it seems like most of my patients don't need xrays or some that do refuse to get them... ugggh! Anyway, today I did my class 1B exam and I think I failed it because I missed so many areas. I really feel like I can't do a decent job without taking a lot of time to do it. I tried to follow the instructors' advice and "risk" a few mistakes to speed up but then I just ended up missing what seemed like every single tooth in my patient's mouth. I just want to feel like I know what I am doing and be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. One good thing is that I did get this patient done in one appointment (without xrays) and he did have a lot of stain from tobacco. So I feel pretty optimistic about that.

The day before Valentine's Day

I couldn't think of a title for this blog so... there you go! Today I saw my first class 2 patient but he was a light class 2 with a bit of recession. The hardest part of scaling today was distinguishing CEJ from calculus deposits. Professor Alexander helped me learn how to distinguish the two by sound because the deposits have a scratchier sound to them whereas CEJ is just more of a definite clicking noise. Everyday I am getting more and more comfortable with things. One thing I am worried about is xrays because I haven't taken any PA's or Panos, and I have only had like 4 BWX patients! I better start getting patients that need xrays. Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Classifications?

Today I finished scaling my patient and I realized that patient classification often depends on the instructor you have. When I started my patient she was classified as a 1B but I thought her probe depths and tissues were more of a class 2. She just didn't have enough calculus to be a class 2. So the instructor put her as 1B. Then today the instructor I saw wanted to put her as a class 2 but couldn't because she didn't have the chance to see her initially... so she ended up being a class 5, which is probably about right. Either way, I took a whole hour to scale which means I am SLOW!!! My goal is to try and speed up just a bit. Maybe get my class 1B scale time down to 45 minutes.

No Habla Espanol!

On Monday I treated my first spanish speaking patient and today I did my Class 1A exam on a patient with ADHD! Its been a pretty interesting week. Monday I realized that I really should learn to speak Spanish because I am sure that in the future we will be treating an increasing amount of Spanish speaking patients. Luckily, my patient was very nice and understanding and Midtown was nice enough to help me out with translation. Oh and I borrowed Jalene's patient for a minute to help translate too! The good thing is she is supposed to come back at the end of March and she's a class 3. It was pretty fun probing around and feeling tons of calculus. I don't think I was able to get totally accurate probe depths though because it kept getting caught on the calculus. McConaughy suggested that when she come back I clean one area and then reprobe it.
The Class 1A today was pretty simple. I really liked not having to probe. My patient was very shy and didn't say one word to me but other than that, it was okay. I felt kind of rushed knowing that he was ADHD and worrying that he might freak out but he was really still for a 5 yr. old and I was able to get everything done just fine.

No Habla Espanol!