Rigid. Long Shank. Complex/Simple....

Today was just a great day. We got to start learning more about our instruments and where we use them and what they function best. It is the ah ha moment because now it is all starting to make sense and come together and it makes it so much more fun!!!
It was really nice to be able to spend so much time today just practicing! It makes me a lot more comfortable being in someone else's mouth with sharp instruments now that I know how to fulcrum better and have a better hold of my instrument. Good times in clinic!!!

This is just the funnest stuff ever!

I am loving school!! It is so fun to actually be in the program and studying for what I want to do for the rest of my life. I love that I am learning how to keep myself safe and the patient safe.

This is my soapbox for the day.

Today we were learning how to explore around the mouth. Karen was my patient and I felt SO BAD when I made her bleed! But she said it didn't hurt so I guess I am off the hook. When I was a patient I understood better why it is so important to make the turn with your explorer around the curve of the tooth, because it is painful when that sharp explorer goes into my gums. But Karen did a wonderful job and she only made me bleed and cry a couple times, and I made her bleed and cry more so she gets the points for today.

Today it was so funny because Leigh was having a hard time seeing one area of the mouth and she was learning really close to her "patient" I told her I was going to take a picture and send her a ticket for incorrect positioning. Her excuse was she was "telling the patient a secret"...good times in the east pod!!!

School is great and we are having a great time!!!!!

Ready, Get set, GO!!!

Today was a jam packed day of probing and fun! I was teamed up with Heather and we were practicing probing on each other. I am not going to lie, sometimes it was really painful when she didn't go around the tooth and angle the probe and it was going straight into my gums!  But she got better and then it felt like more of a massage.
Karen and I also passed off some PE's today. It has been really crazy with PE's lately, it seems like we have been given a lot (8!!!!)  and not anytime to pass them off. I have been ready to pass of 4 PE's, but haven't been able to because everybody still had to pass off ones that were really time consuming. That is what you get when you have 2 PE's a day, they build up fast and then you are trying to learn so fast that you aren't able to pass them off. My recommendation would be to have some time everyday where you can pass off PE's.

Busy busy busy

Today in clinic was pretty busy because we had a guest speaker so we didnt' have time to do a lot of practicing and passing PE's off. We have SO many PE's right now to pass off!!! But we did get to work on each other and do intra-oral exams. I was paired up with Leigh and we were on FIRE! Hopefully we can pass of a bunch of PE's next clinic so we can get caught up! Well that is about all I have for this blog, remember I said that it was busy, yeah it's already time to go. Wow does time fly when you are having fun!

Probe Probe Probe: Scale Scale Scale

Well I guess we aren't probing or scaling or really even doing anything yet. But Karen and I like to pretend that as we go around in our clock positions that we are actually performing grand works for our partner. It is always fun to get someone in the chair and practice positioning and have my hands in their mouth.

Today I also passed off a few PE's and the health history was really nerve wrecking. It would be alright if I had had some practice, but when this way of charting is totally new then it is hard to remember everything. Good think that I will have a lot of practice in the next two years.

This weekend is the UDHA convention and I am pretty excited! I am mostly just excited to ride the frontrunner because I have never ridden it before. I have only been on a regular city bus 1 or 2 times in my whole life! Adventure awaits!!!!

Just another day in clinic

I am sorry to whoever reads this blog because I am afraid I am slightly boring and not very witty. But it is fun to relflect on the day and how it has gone. Karen and I passed off our patient positioning PE's today and I am thinking that I am going to try and do the health history as well so that I don't have to do it next time. That means I gotta run and study a little more. I think I am getting the hang of this and everyday just seems to get easier. That doesn't mean that life in the other subjects is getting easier though because in the next 10 days I think I have 4 exams. Wish me luck!

Michelle

HHx/HHxRx

So much to learn, so little time. I wish I was just born with a tremendous wealth of knowledge so that I would just know everything!!! But  I guess I will just have to learn it day by day. Karen and I were together today and we took each other's vital signs (it seems like I always go first and I am the guinea pig and almost everything I do is wrong, I am making Karen go first next time). We learned that the importance of taking vital signs before anything is so that we don't go through the entire health history and then find out that we aren't going to be able to work on our patient...frustrating. We went around in a circle and each of us looked up different drugs and what their oral effects would be...not to exciting but good to learn.

Clinic was ok, but I really want to say what happened to me this weekend because it is much more exciting!!! I went down to do the hike Big Segars Hole. I drove down with my husband, Bryce and my dad. We got down to where we were supposed to be about 11:30 at night. We were driving across a river bed and KERPLUNK!!! We sunk axle deep into the mud. Since there was little we could do for the poor truck that night, we got our sleeping bags out and we had a wonderful night sleeping under the stars. The next morning we worked for hours trying to get the truck out. Luckily there was somebody staying in the campground next to us and they tried to help pull us out...unluckily we broke our rapelling rope TWICE and the truck didn't even move. But they did give my dad a ride 35 miles on a lonely dirt rode until he had service and he was able to call the tow truck. It took the tow truck 2 1/2 hours to get to us and even then they didn't have all of the equipment we needed. So we had to use our poor rapelling rope again. Obviously we made it out somehow and made it home safely, no worse for wear. Lesson learned: Don't drive into the muddy creek!!!

We're going to Rock around the clock!!!

"We're going to rock around the clock tonight, we're going to rock rock rock 'til the broad daylight"  

Today in clinic we were working on how to position our bodies correctly with the patient so that we won't get injuries and we can be ergonomically correct. This is achieved by orienting yourself in different times of the clock. I know this is a very important skill for someone who's body is so vital to their job. Instructor Hafen told us about how she had to take 5 years off of work because of injuries related to incorrect positioning over years of working. The weirdest thing to overcome is being SPREAD EAGLE above the patient's head. The other thing we went over was where we position ourselves so that we can see and perform well for wherever we are working in the mouth. It was my "AH HA" moment for the day because now I can see how much easier it is to move the mirror, pt's head, and light before sacrificing my body position. We had a lot of fun in our pod shouting out numbers and surfaces and then the rest of us would find where we were supposed to be, our clock position, if we were supposed to use the mirror and where the light would be. 

Well that is a lot of words for not very much cool information. From now on we are going to 

"ROCK" the "CLOCKS!!"

See ya next time fellas