Don't have grimey teeth? We'll do it for you!

So today in clinic, we did the air-powder polisher which made a huge mess of my operatory, the floor and my patient! It is like sand blasting your teeth, really. Then we polished our patient and flossed and then put varnish on. EWE! It feels like waxy plaque all over your mouth. It feels really gross after a nice cleaning. It was a fun day though! I was with Megan Jurk! She's hilarious! It was a good day!

Ultra Sonic

Mmm... ultra sonic scaling wasn't as scary as I thought. I didn't get to do it on a live patient very long, but it was pretty straight forward. Today we were all in a hurry to pass off our OHI PE and our intra oral camera PE. We didn't have a lot of time in the first place, and all of the instructors were busy passing everyone off, so I was a little late getting out of clinic. It was an okay day, but not very exciting.

Practice Makes Perfect... I Hope

So today was a practice day in clinic. I'm hoping that scaling comes with time and practice. I passed off my universal scaling PE and I still don't feel very comfortable doing this. I tried to pass off my intra-oral camera PE but we ran out of time after I already had it set up and ready to go. Oh, well. It's a super easy PE, so I'll just get it out of the way next week! Anyway, I didn't feel too productive today, I really hope that next week goes better than this week. I didn't really like this week... at all. It wasn't a hard week, just not very fun.

Eh...

Clinic wasn't very fun today. I wasn't able to pass off any PE's because we ran out of time. We were supposed to have a lot of extra time today so my plan was to get way ahead, but I didn't. Oh well. We went over some health history stuff which is still confusing to me. I feel like I get things and then I go to do them and then I realize, I don't. I'm sure the more I do, the more it will come to me. I get really frustrated when I can't do things. I want to learn something and then be able to do it really good. Well, I'm gonna have to learn some patience. Hopefully Wednesday goes better than today.

How many fillings do you have?

Today in clinic we did dental screenings. We just counted the restorations in each others teeth and charted them. We also wrote down any "suspicious" areas. This was pretty easy and fun! Then I was able to pass of a couple PE's. I did the instrument classification and the eaglesoft treatment plan PE's. I feel caught up now! On monday, my plan is to pass of the universal instrumentation and dental screening PE's. Pro. Costley said we should have plenty of time monday so I hope everything goes to plan!

Do You Bleed Purple? Or Just Have Plaque?

So today in clinic we did Plaque Free Indices. We checked out each others plaque and wrote down their plaque free percentage. This was done by using a purple disclosing agent. It made our mouths totally purple. It was gross looking. All of us had plaque so it wasn't too embarrassing. My score needs to be improved so I'll work on that. Then at the end we did some scaling. I mostly did posteriors because that is the next PE I need to pass off. We charted for our partner and that was pretty much all we did, it took us a while cause we're all slow at pretty much everything!

LeTs DiG iN!!!

Today in clinic we learned to use the columbia and the Barnhart. They are pretty much the same thing but one is longer than the other. We did mostly posterior scaling with them and I tried some anterior, but I think there are better instruments for the anteriors. I feel actually pretty comfortable with posterior scaling. I had a lot of fun today! I also got to scale someone's lower lingual anteriors that had some calculus! It was sooo satisfying to get stuff off! That was really fun! We also learned how to do treatment plans on Eaglesoft. It seems pretty straight forward (but we'll see how I do when I don't have a cheat sheet.)
I also was able to pass of two PE's! I did the anterior scaling and the adaptation, angulation, and activation PE's! This is way more exciting than exploring and probing.

AH! Scaling

Today in clinic we learned how to scale the anterior teeth. This was really fun and really scary and really hard. My fingers hurt, especially my fulcrum. On the typodont where I started it was really fun because I didn't have to worry about hurting Gunther, his gingiva doesn't have nerve endings. The calculus on the typodont wasn't supposed to be tenatious, but it seemed like it was to me. It was fun when I could get some chunks to fly off! Then it was real patient time. Linda was my victim and I didn't go too subgingivly. I really didn't want to hurt her, but I think I have the right concepts, I'm going to practice on "Gunther" my typodont a little more so I can get more comfortable with it!

Instruments!

The instruments weren't too bad to learn, I expected a lot more information on them. Maybe there's still more to come. We learned about the shape and contour of them, why some are shaped different from others; where in the mouth to use certain ones, and different angles on them for specialized areas. I'm excited we get to use them soon! I hope I can identify them better though. Some of them look very similar and they all have way different names. I guess that will come with time and experience using them.
I was able to pass of the intra-oral exam, probing, and exploring PE's. Woot! I'm excited to be ahead again. I was getting stressed cause I was getting behind, but we're back on track!