selective polishing

Today was a good day for me I felt very relaxed and wasn't stress at all. I was an assistant before so I feel comfortable polishing and flossing and applying fluoride. I thought the day went well. I finally felt totally comfortable doing something from the very beginning. We also talk to the instructors about different offices and how you know when you are working for a good dentist. I also showed Joni a new trick to floss lower anterior retainers that are cemented on only the cuspids

posterior scaling

Today I had a goal to not hurt my patient. It was a really good experience today. I liked practicing on a patient. I am glad we work on a typodont, but it isn't the same as working on a real patient. I am excited to start working on real patients because for me I feel it is the best way for me to learn is to practice. I really thought today was good. I did poke my patient a little, but she said it was like alomost poke. A little uncomfortable, but not hurt just anticipating the poke. I really thought it was a great clinic. I hope we are going to start doing things like this more because we don't have too many clinic days left so it will be best I think to just practice.

Posterior scaling

I thought the PE for today was kindo of fun. I really like how instructor Vining went beyond teh PE and asked us things and pointed out things that would make more sense in the real world like excatly why you are using this instrument and not that one. I really enjoyed posterior scaling as well I feel like it will be good. I need to practice like always, but I liked how we had time to really cover all of the surfaces.

Intra oral camera and the process so far

Today I had a goal to be calm. After we got ane-mail over the weekend that said we had to do all of these steps and we were timed I got a little stressed. So like I said my goal was to chill out and not worry about that and jsut do what I have learned so far. I think that was a good experience though because we are needing to go faster at the different procedures and this is a good way to monitor if we are up to par or not. I really liked it. I also thought the intra oral camera was really cool. It was hard to figure out though I think that I would need consitant practice at that so I could work backwards, but I think I would really like to use on in an office. you can see a lot with it. It is a really good learning device.

scaling

I have been really excited for this day to come for along time. It was a really fun day. I was so excited to start scaling and see how it really worked. I did get a little frustrated working on the typodont and I was nervous to work in someones mouth. I finally chilled out a little and got the hang of it though. I actually thought that working in a real mouth was easier. It was really exciting to actually find calculus and start to remove it. We jsut worked on the anterior teeth and that is good because it is more accesible and I hope we work more on the anterior before we get to the posterior so I get the hang of it before I can't see. I am really looking forward to Monday clinic and getting better at scaling

Putting it all together

Today was a really awesome day I really enjoyed it, I though the day was really fun. I liked working with the someone else rather than in our pod. I like to see how the process is going to go. I can't wait though until we get fast enough to do it in a reasonable time frame. I thought the clinic went very well though. This is short because I already posted and it didn't work so I can't remember what I wrote sorry.

Dent charting

I learned how to chart the teeth. I though it was really fun and I thought it went well. The way we have to chart all the things is pretty easy, but at the same time I think some of the ways we chart say a bridge or an impactd tooth is weird. This will also help w/ the case study. I really enjoyed this and going through charts so I could see others mistakes and learn.

disclosing agnet

Today was a very relaxed fun day. I really enjoyed it. I also got to practice a little w/ exploring and that was good. Today we learned about disclosing agents. I thought it was interesting to see. Even people w/ clean mouths have low PFI sometimes. I found that really interesting because you think that low PFI would only come from people who have obvious plaque. I learned a lot about that and about how I need to do better myself. It was weird I hardly had any plaque on the proximal surfaces of teh posterior teeth, but my anterior teeth were a lot worse. I guess I need to work on that. Even people who have really clean mouths still need to work on their PFI.

probe 2

Like I said on Monday I really enjoyed probing so for the goal for the day was to practice practice practice. We also learned how to do BFI, but my pt. didn't bleed at all so I just had to make up numbers to try and figure out how to do the BFI. I think the session went really well. I have a cold sore thoguh so I don't feel like I am totally getting the best experience because I can't be worked on, but there isn't anything I can do. I just have to try and stay involved when my pod partner is working on someone else. I am having moments when I feel like I can do this and other moments I wonder and feel really over whlemed.

Probing

I was hontestly terrified to probe and I am not sure why. It just seemed scary to me. I was affraid of poking my partner and I was very intimidated. Even after we worked on the typodonts I still was very anxious about working in a real persons mouth. Once we started to work in the mouth it went really slow, but it wasn't has bad as I had anticipated. I actually really enjoyed it. Obviously speed will come with practice. I think so far that probing has been the most fun of all. I am really excited to continue working on probing. I hope next time I will just get better and better.