Instruments

Today we learned about the different instruments that we will be using. I have a couple of them down, but it will take a while before i'm an expert. We practiced probing and exploring today as well. It feels like things are starting to come at us pretty fast now, I think it's going to continue to get harder to keep up.

I'm fairly confident in probling, though I need a lot more practice before I will be ready to pass it off. Exploring is still difficult for me so I know I'll be practcing that as well.

Adaptation, Activation, Angulation!

Today we practiced using the explorer. It's difficult trying to go from your use of sight to using tactile sensation. It's something that I'm not very good at yet. Something else that is difficult for me is keeping a light grasp on the instrument. It seems like if I relax my grasp, my fulcrum gets sloppy, if I try to keep a good fulcrum I'm using too much pressure on my patient!

Adaptation seemed easy enough when it was being demonstrated on the big tooth with the big instrument end... but is actually difficult. Adapting, maintaining the right pressure, and and trying to feel through tactile sensation all at the same time is going to take some practice for me!

Probing

Probing was more difficult than I would have though. You have to look at the probe, and subtract how many lines you see from total on the probe. There are quick ways of doing it, but it's still going to take some getting used to. The pressure is also something that I know will take practice. Probing takes a lot more pressure in the mouth of my typodont than in my patient's mouth. It's also a lot easier to fulcrum in the typodont mouth. Practice makes perfect, and I'm sure that's something we will get a lot of... practice.

I think the BFI varies greatly by who is probing. Someone who doesn't have much practice with probing is going to make the patient bleed a lot more than someone who has been doing it for 10 years.

Intra Oral Exams

We did intra-oral exams in clinic today. This is one of my favorite parts of dental hygiene! I love seeing the different anatomy that exists in people's mouths. It's interesting to see patients with palate tori, geographic tongues, fissured tongues, bifid uvula's and other interesting anomalies.

I passed off the Vitals and Health History PE's today. I'm trying my hardest to keep caught up.

I feel like I have a lot more studying to do before I can pass off the extra-oral and intra-oral PE's, though.

Extra Oral Examinations

Today in clinic we learned how to perform an Extra Oral Examination. The PE for it looked a little intimidating, but after getting help from our TA today it doesn't seem as bad. I am having a hard time feeling things and knowing the exact location where I should feel. I plan to spend a lot of time this weekend practicing on my husband/family. I'm really grateful for so many good people in my life who let me practice on them!

We have been doing a lot of PE's lately. It seems like even getting them passed off ahead of time, they start to stack up on me. The only way to keep up is to stay organized, stay on task, and use the time I have in clinic wisely. Dental Hygiene is one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I've surprised myself by how I've been able to rise to the challenge. It's like anything you do in life, what you get out of it is proportionate to the amount of effort you invest.

Vitals

Today we focused on taking and recording vital signs. This was definitely one of the easier days in terms of the quantity of information we had to learn. I took vitals on my partner, but had a very difficult time hearing when I was taking blood pressure readings. Her pulse was also a little difficult to feel. I am going to see if I can get a variety of family member to practice on, so that I can get proficient at this. I'll add it to the mounting to do list.

We used the extra time to get some of our upcoming PE's passed off. I'm quickly learning that with everything building on eachother, we need to have these PE's passed off as quickly as possible. If we wait until the due date, we can easily fall behind. It feels good to be feeling more comfortable in clinic, and I'm really enjoying what we are learning.

Health History

Today we learned how to chart a patient's health history. I've always looked at that as super easy watching the dentist do it, but it's not that easy at all! You have to know the codes and abbreviations, look up possible drug complications, note conditions and so much more! I kind of struggled with how to word things, so I am going to practice and review module 4 in PAT. I'm so excited to think that we will be using all of the skills we are learning in clinic on real patients before too long!