REAL Patient Day!!

Yesterday was our first real patient day. I had Bryan come in and he was a good sport even though he'd been fighting a bad cold for the past few days. Vitals was my first obstacle, I had to retake his BP a few times cuz it was coming up higher than we expected it to be and I kept doubting myself since it had been a while since we had done vitals. Xrays were next but I didn't have a problem there and actually took some dang good Bwxrays!
It had been about 1 1/2 yrs since his last cleaning and he had a lot of calculus built up. He had a lot of 4mm pockets and bleeding everywhere and since his xrays showed he was beginning to lose a little bone made him a class 2. Good for me bad for him! I only got through the OD and barely explained OHI before I had to walk him out. No cleaning today! But I told him that next time we can just go directly into the cleaning.
Overall it was a good experience. I just felt rushed even though we had 2 1/2 hrs to do everything! Now I'm looking forward to cleaning all of that calculus off his teeth!!!

Last Mock Patient Day

Today was the last day of working on each other. I was the RDH today and Kirsten was my patient. Her teeth were pretty clean so it didn't take very long to scale them but I did have to go back to 2 areas on the lower lingual anteriors that I missed. I also passed off the Sealant PE. I guess this means I'm ready to start on real patients? A little scary but it has to start some time!

RDH for a day!

Well it was my turn to be the RDH on Wed. I was the only one in my pod so it was very quiet. It took me probably 20 min. to do a full mouth probe and by the time I got to scaling I only had 40 min to do 2 quads of scaling, which may seem like a long time but when we haven't done much practicing it's not! I missed 3 areas of calculus but what I learned there was that I need to dry the teeth so I can see the calculus better. Great learning experience and next week will be the same thing just different person.

The beginning of the end!

This past Monday we started our mock patient days. I was paired with Stephanie this week and I was the patient first. It was a nice relaxing day for me except that my back hurt by the end of clinic from being in the chair so long. It was also good to see someone go through what I need to do on Wed! I did find out too that I will be alone in my pod since the other three were RDH's first. Oh well I guess that means less distractions!

No light is good!

Today we learned how to sharpen our instruments. The one thing you want to make sure is that there is no light reflected off the edge--that means it's sharp! I have loved this week in clinic cuz it's been an easier week. We passed off the Air Powder Polishing and Fluoride PE's today too. I'm soooo glad to be done with the air powder polishing!!!!

Easy day

Yesterday was a less stressful day of clinic. We applied one sealant on each other and then passed off the selective polishing PE. Sooo easy! We did fluoride after the polishing and I was able to try the cherry cheescake flavor that the 2nd years were raving about. I must admit it was really good! We are almost done with all of our PE's! Next week we start our mock patients, it's getting closer and closer to when we start on real patients!! Think I could use any more of the exclamation points?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!