11/29

Erik came in today as my first patient, and I was nervous. I was so flustered, I couldn't find a pulse and couldn't hear the BP, then I had to retake an x-ray so I felt so behind. But everyone else was pretty much at the same pace as me. I started to scale a little bit but didn't finish a quad. Hopefully I can get him done next visit. At least I'm getting down the paperwork and the order of procedure.

11/27

Today Ashley worked on me. She didn't get as far as I did, so I think I did pretty good on time. Erik is coming in on Wednesday so hopefully I can get enough done to feel comfortable. This weekend was thanksgiving and on Friday I had an emergency appendectomy. So today I'm not real excited to be here, but I didn't want to have to make it up.

11/22

Today I worked on my first real patient, kind of, it was Ashley. BUt i think I did really well. I completed scaling and everything. Of course she didn't have much calculus to remove, but at least I jot the hang of doing everything in order.

11/20

Emergency procedures. It's kind of scary to think of what I'd do in an emergency. We are supposed to tell our pod partner that we have a stat situation and then they are supposed to go and get an instructor. But I know that if I really had a situation I would just stand up and say HELP! SO hopefuly I just never have to deal with that situation.

11/15

Today we did sealants. I touched up a tiny one on Cassandra for practice, but I've seen so many of them done that I think I'll be ok. It just is going to be hard to do them on little children. We also put some flouride varnish on eachother. My #30 is soo sensitive, I'm hoping this will help. We also found a sticky spot on #15, but the diagnodent did not give a reading so I'm not sure if it's decay or not. I need to make an appointment and see a dentist to make sure.

11/13

Today we did the powder polishing. I am only going to use it if I have to because it is a pain to set up, and it is messy. I didn't mind the taste too much, it's not any worse than the regular prophy paste. I kind of went through and scaled the whole mouth, and I think I'm getting more comfortable with everything, I'm excited for Erik to come in and practice on him.

11/8

Sharpening! Today we sharpened our instruments, I was suprised at how dull they already were. The DXXTR's probably dulled them some, and we've only worked on each other a little bit. It made me realize how important it is to sharpen, and how often we need to do it.

11/6

Flouride! Today we learned how to do a flouride treatment, 5 minutes. So the rest of the day we practiced what we needed to brush up on. I probed and explored a little since I hadn't done it in months ( at least it's felt like a while). Then I scaled, polished and did a flouride tx. I quite enjoyed the orange flouride, but it was a bit sour, but no bad after taste.

11/1

Today we went through the patient treatment and learned polishing. I have already polished when I worked in the dental office, so that was nothing new. But we are only supposed to selective polish. I think some patients might think we're doing a crappy job if we only polish a few of the teeth and hand brush the rest, but I guess we'll just have to see.