Summer Work

This summer if every thing goes as planned I will be working with Ally in a pediatric office. I have observed my pediatric dentist and assistants before entering the program. I love the opportunity to work as an assistant! My goal this summer is to work in an environment that will allow me to contribute to a dental practice while continuing to learn more about effective office procedures. Every summer since high school I have worked in a restaurant as a hostess and waitress. This allowed me to successfully build good communication and people skills. This opportunity will allow me to apply these skills in a dental office.

before the program

Know looking back I wish that I had worked in an office before coming into the program. I know that it is recommended to observe. I observed the dental school, a pediatric dentist and my personal general dentist. This was not enough. It would have been good to be an assistant and work with instruments and materials in the office. The students in the program who have had experience are clearly a head of the class. I would recommend to every student entering the program to spend time volunteering or working as an assistant. Even though things are done differently in the school those who have worked in an office pick up the task much quicker. An example is in dental materials pouring up gypsum. Those who have done it before seemed to get it done right away while I had to redo mine because it had blebs (bubbles) in it making the cast unusable.

Service Learning

I find service learning to be one of the most enjoyable out of school activities that we do in this program. I think that the process of signing up for them needs to be modified with the size of our class but other than that it is a smooth process. Melanie and I went to an Elementary school in the south side and really enjoyed finding out what the kids knew about brushing there teeth. The kids were so excited about showing us there silver crowns. They were so proud of them. It was cool in this class to have a silver tooth. The teacher of the class even contacted Melanie and said that the kids were still talking about the experiment of tooth decay we demonstrated a week later. It seems that every where we go people have questions. As I have progressed through out the program I feel like I have the knowledge to give people an informed answer to there questions. It is rewarding to have family, friends and others who know I am in the program to ask me questions and depend on me to help them or give them advice about there oral health.

Clinic

I know that we all complain about clinic and not seeing enought patients. I wanted to vent on the blog and express how I feel about the situation. I don't think that it is fair to the students who had the majority of their clinic in the Wood building in the beginning of the semester. The students who had their rotations at the begining of the semester are at an advantage right now. They are seeing patients almost every time they are in clinic. I remember only 4 patients one day in the clinic at the beginng of the semester. Whic now everytime I go in there at least 10 patients are sceduled. I even had a part time faculty member say to me I have never seen you with a patient. I know that professors have expressed some concern about not attempting more competencies on patients in the beginning of the semester. At this time we were told not to worry about competencies they will come! They didn't come. Also I have had about 2 patients a month. I am very dissapointed! I do not learn without repitition. I need at a minimum one patient a week for me to feel comfortable. Everytime I learned something new in clinic I would have to wait a month to repeat that skill.

I feel that we should be able to complete competencies over the summer. We have not been given a good reason as to why they can't be completed. I understand that we should focus on the patients needs! At the same time the seniors have expressed that the fall semester is one of the hardest in this program. I do not want to be concerned with junior competencies in my senior year! This will only keep us behind next year!

Oral Surgery Rotation

Oral Surgery was by far my favorite rotation that I have been on so far. I along with Alyssa and Beth saw lichan plannus, sialolith, osteonecrosis and many other things. It was horrible but at the same time very interesting to see many examples of what we learned in Oral Pathology. I love being in this program because I am learning and applying what I have learned every day in clinic. That is something we really didn't do very often on the undergraduate campus.

Also, with one patient in oral surgery a fourth year dental student did 6 extractions. There were no complications. He ended the appointment with instructions such as not sucking through a straw, no spitting, no smoking or alcohol use for at least a week and a list of others. After we left the Nelson clinic to go back to the dental school I saw the same patient sitting on a bench smoking! I couldn't believe it. It made me angry thinking this is what our patients do right after we give oral hygiene instructions and even after speaking with them about smoking cessation they will smoke as soon as they leave the building. It makes me angry that people don't listen to health care providers and it only harms them. The problem is that they already know that it is a problem and still can't or won't stop smoking!