Another day in the office

April 28, 2014

Monday was my second time coming into the dental office and I felt a little more confident going into the office and communicating with my mentor and her coworkers. Before she began on any patients she did the process of cleaning in her work space that I explained from the first time I came in. This time my mentor told me to focus more on the way she speaks to the patient. She told me it was very important to explain things clearly. When she spoke with a patient when explain things she used a lot of hand gestures. Also when explaining your teeth and gums she gave a really cool example. She told the patient to pretend her hand was their tooth and pretend her glove line was our gums, she then used this example to teach the patients how to brush properly of show them the effects of gingivitis. Another way she explained things to the patients was with booklets she had and with models of the mouth that were in the office. I also noticed the patients asking her questions about different brands of tooth paste, tooth brushes, mouth wash, and teeth whitener. It was interesting to me because she knew the answer to each of their questions. Later when I asked her about she told me a dental hygienist is not only someone that cleans your teeth as she had told me before they are also researchers. What this means is you must take time off the job to look up studies on things your patients ask you about. She also said sometimes when she hears of a new dental item she goes into the store and buys it to see how it works. Another thing I caught onto other than her explaining things was the questions she asked the patients and how they responded. Today not one of her patients said they flossed regularly and more than half of them were close to having gingivitis. When working on patients teeth she also measured how deep the bone was which was pretty interesting because deeping on how far her tool goes until she hits the bone is how much bone in your teeth you have lost during the years. She told me that it's okay to lose some bone but it is dangerous to lose to much and if you have lost a lot you most likely have peridontitis. It was also really interesting because today I got to see her do a deep cleaning. For the deep cleaning she had to give the patient four shots on each side. You only get a deep cleaning when your gingivitis is getting really bad. Overall today was very interesting and I can't wait to go in one more time. 

Time logged for session: 10 hrs

Total time logged: 20 hrs