Last day at the VA!

I bet that is a popular dental hygiene post title because it is so exciting. I guess its not truly my last day, but it is my last day until the end of February so that is pretty exciting. I have really actually enjoyed my time here at the VA. In fact, I definitely prefer this environment to WSU clinic just because you don't have to do forever-long ODs. But it makes for a super long week when you have class Monday, VA Tuesday, TA Wednesday and Clinic Thursday. It is really nice to be completely done with that busy, busy schedule. Today my patients weren't too exciting. I saw a 1B in the morning and a Class 5 in the afternoon. My class 5 patient admitted to not really doing any OH ever until yesterday. That's right, he started brushing his teeth yesterday, folks! As I hygienist I just think, how could this happen? And now I hope he is motivated enough to keep it up so he can keep what teeth he has left.

TA the day before Thanksgiving

Message to Prof. Costley: Do not forget that you need to change the schedule next year to cancel clinic on the day before Thanksgiving. It is the absolute worst day of the year to be in clinic. And another thing, with the students working on each other it was really hard to stay occupied as a TA. If you really wanted to be nice you could give the TA's this day off to work on their papers. :)

Okay so moving on... in clinic it was the student treatment day so I mostly sat around with loads of time on my hands. It was really boring to say the least. I thought everyone did a really great and thorough job on their student treatments. One thing everyone seemed to forget was filling out the patient encounter forms but that will probably get easier, especially when you are seeing real patients. Otherwise, good luck to everyone on their first day of real patient treatment. I am so excited to be able to see ya all in action actually applying everything you've worked your bums off to learn this semster.

3rd to last day of clinic

Today I am on the verge of completing my 3rd to last day of clinic and it feels great. I am going to be totally honest when I say that I really don't enjoy cleaning teeth. I enjoy the end product and sense of fulfillment in having cleaned a patient with perio or bad ginigivitis. I enjoy interacting with the patients and getting to know them. I also enjoy feeling like I am helping each patient and doing something good for someone else. But I really don't like cleaning teeth. I guess the other parts of the job are just more rewarding so it all equals out in the end but day after day I dread seeing another tooth covered in plaque and calculus. On the bright side, the aches and pains in my back seem to be getting less severe as I am getting used to it.

Radiology TA, again

Yesterday was my last experience as radiology TA, thank heavens! Nothing against the teacher or any of the students of course, you are all excellent, it is just a very boring subject to be a TA. However, I was thankful for my experience today as it was very enlightening. We were using the bisecting the angle technique and PANOs. It was a very good review of bisecting because I really didn't feel like I got a really good experience with it last year so I was learning more than I was teaching or assisting! The PANO was also a good review because our learning how to use the PANO machine was very basic last year so it was helpful to watch the video and see all the basics of setting up the Frankfort plane and everything broken down again. Its amazing how much I've learned, but at the same time, as I am reviewing things in first year clinic, I am seeing a lot that I have forgotten. So even though it has been painfully boring at times, overall it has been an invaluable experience.

Thank heaven for the VA!

I got another class 2 at the VA and it is so nice because without the VA there is no way I would have seen anywhere close to twenty quads of a class 2. I also got to take another pano and BWX. I love taking digital xrays and I never want to manually process another film as long as I live. To put it short, I love the VA. Except for the smell, I hate the smell.

Sharpening - TA

Today we did instrument sharpening and I felt really confident in my ability to instruct them on this thankfully! It is funny how last year I really didn't know how to sharpen or feel confident in it at all and then after the clinic we had this year I felt really great about it... plus I got a Gleason Guide which is AWESOME! I also am a big advocate of sharpening because I hate working with instruments that aren't super sharp so I sharpen frequently. You might say I am a sharpening queen. Totally kidding!

CLiNic DaY... A day of stain

Today was a very productive day and I feel really good about it. I got a class V in the a.m and two 1A this afternoon. Wahoo! I am closing the gap on these "requirements" quickly... they don't stand a chance. ;) (I know I am a dork). So anyway, my morning patient was a pretty standard class V perio maintenance patient and he was doing a pretty good job maintaining his perio as far as I could see. Looking back at some of his old charts, his probe depths had improved significantly and he was generally healthy. The biggest project I had on him was the heavy stain from drinking black tea & smoking a water pipe. He was from India and explained to me how it was a very big social custom... fascinating... but still not good for your health!

THEN, this afternoon the first 1A patient I saw was an 11-year old with black line stain on the lingual and facial surfaces of her lower anteriors. Crazy, huh? It was hard work hand scaling all that. Luckily, her younger sister didn't have any stain so it was a little easier. Only 4 weeks left!!

Party at the VA!

Today we had three no-shows, hence, here I am blogging my little heart out! We studied the AndyRDH board quizzes, which makes me really wish that boards could be taken as a group, and studied some of the hygiene decks too. I thought the AndyRDH site was a really good quiz to go through for sample board questions.

Mockboards... glad that is over!

So, lets just say that 37.5/100 isn't exactly a good score on mockboards so you can imagine how I was feeling for the rest of the day. I can comfort myself a little by knowing that Prof. Hanson told me he was an incredibly difficult patient that she wouldn't put in front of anyone as an exam patient but still... I only got like 2 areas completed and he has to come back for completion of the quad that I worked on for mockboards. I just can't help but think, what the heck is my problem? I feel like 2 hours should have been more than enough time and yet I know when I was working on him there was still a lot of work to do after 2 hours. So I guess I'd just like to know how much of it was him being a hard patient and how much of it was just my own inefficiency?

And even though I went home with a horrible feeling of dissappointment after this mockboard I am looking forward to the next one hoping that I will be able to redeem myself, at least somewhat. Anyway, it was a good learning experience and I'm glad I had a hard patient instead of an easier patient because I wouldn't be as aware of my limitations if that were the case.

The happy couple

This is me & Eric... I just thought this was a cute picture of us! :)

My engagement ring

By request here is a picture of my ring. My fingers look really big and fat in it though! I love it... Last night I had a horrible nightmare that I went to show it to somebody and all the diamonds had fallen out of it! Luckily when I went to check it this morning they were still all there.
And this is a picture of Eric, me & the "Doctor", whom I later found out was just an orderly,at the official proposal.

Universal imstrumentation TA

Today in clinic we covered universal instrumentation and I found myself getting a little frustrated sometimes because I felt like I would offer a suggestion to a student a either they wouldn't really understand what I was trying to say or they would try it and it wouldn't work for them. It wasn't something that was constantly happening but it did happen a few times and I just wanted to say "okay don't listen to me because I don't know what I'm talking about!" Anyway, hopefully I am able to give them answers which are consistent with what other TA's and instructors are giving. Otherwise, it was just another great day of Clinical TA-ing! Only 5 more weeks left.

Clinic TA - 10/18/06

I was the radiology TA for the second time today and today was really good for me. Mostly it was a good learning experience for me but also I think I was a little bit of help for the junior students as well. I learned how to do digital xrays, which I'd never done before and even got a chance to play around with it a little bit. I learned how to write on the films and put graphics on them (like circling a spot of calculus or something). Anyway, it was also a good review of technique for taking PA's. I think I'd kind of forgotten the proper technique for the canine film and as I was helping the students today things started coming back to me.

LAB & CLINIC

The lab this morning was really fun & as crazy as this sounds, it made me a little nostalgic of the good ol' days of first year when we didn't have the stress of patients and classifications and requirements. I heard we got some really good pictures of everything.

This afternoon I saw a class 1B patient, which is okay but I'd rather have seen a class 2 because I haven't seen any so far!! Eeks! Better luck next time. Anyway, my patient experience was good because he hadn't had his teeth cleaned in over 4 years. There was a lot of plaque and quite a bit of decalcification along the gumline. I encouraged him to buy Prevident but he wasn't interested so what can you do. It is hard to understand why patients don't take up these great offers we can provide especially when I understand how much he really could've used the Rx toothpaste.

Clinic TA

Sorry I missed clinic on Wednesday, I was home sick! But I made up my questions for my survey which will be handed out next week and I was thinking about which questions to ask I just realized that this experience has been really beneficial for me! I am also nervous about the responses I get on my survey because I don't know if the first years think I am stupid, too aggressive, too laid back, or what but hopefully I am helping them in some small way! :)

Mockboard patient

Yeah, I finally have a mockboard patient so I feel good about that! I was sick in clinic so it was nice to know I could just hurry and clean one quad of my class 3 patient and then schedule him for mockboards. I was totally stressing about it so I feel much better now... other than this nagging cold that just won't subside. But thanks to whoever gave me the tip about the cotton rolls up your nose, it really works! :)

Dent: 3 cavities

Today for the first time as a TA in 1st year clinic I got to be the patient. This was because we were doing Dent screenings and 3 of the 4 students in my pod had mouths full of virgin teeth. (I am insanely jealous.) So I let them practice charting my teeth and they all got to see/explore 2 of the 3 cavities that I was diagnosed with yesterday. :( It was somewhat difficult to act as patient and instructor because when they would ask "What is this?" I would have to strain to look inside my own mouth to try and tell them what they were seeing. Anyway, it is really a good experience to review this stuff each clinic session with the 1st years.

Probing with the first years

I have been dreading teaching probing since I became a TA but honestly, it wasn't bad at all. It is a lot better to teach probing than to actually probe anyway! The thing I really enjoyed about it was going over all the little technicalities because after a year, my grasp and fulcrum and all has gotten sloppy. Also, I passed off the afternoon sessions Explorer and Instrument Grasp PEs and they did awesome. It was also a food review for me because I honestly had forgotten that in the modified pen grasp your fingers are supposed to be in a "c" shape. As little as this seems, now that I am working on that habit I noticed my fingers aren't as sore today! :)

Whadda day!

Today in clinic I saw a class 3 in the am & my first class 4 in the pm. As tiring as it was, I actually really enjoyed the class 4 especially. It was really rewarding to be able to feel definite clicks with the explorer and then actually see the huge chuncks of calculus come out of the pocket after a successful stroke. Today I actually had the thought, "Yeah, I think I can do boards." Whereas, up to this point I've been like "I am never gonna pass boards!" Anyway, I am glad today is over but I felt really good about everything. I am anxiously awaiting my next class 4 patient... but not until next semester hopefully!

36 xrays later...

It's the lastest title of my new horror film. It's about me having to take xrays all day long on both of my patients and it was horrible. But what can you do? I finally get that thing that Prof. Alexander is always saying about how the xrays are like your bright lights when you're driving at night. My patient had some real issues and I really felt like I needed the xrays to see everything that was going on. It was difficult to tell whether his pockets were pseudo pockets or how much bone loss he actually had without seeing the xrays because he had a lot of gingival inflammation. Anyway, I got my xrays done and I hope to see some easy patients here pretty soon. The sad thing is, I've seen a few difficult patients so far, but no patients for mockboards yet.