1-27-09

It really stinks when patients cancel their appointment the night before they are suppose to be seen, especially when they are a classification you need. That happened to me today. I was going to have a good day of a class 3 and a class 2 patient. The class 2 patient cancelled and all I was able to see was a class 5 to take the place. It was okay because I still need almost all the classes of patient (not 1B's), but it was still a little dissappointing. I am hoping to reschedule and not have the patient cancel again.
My class 3 patient was a good experience. He is going to be my mock board! I was able to clean two quads today so I hope I am ready for next Tuesday. He seems to be a good patient. He remembered to come and was on time. Hopefully that is how it works out on mock board day. I don't want this patient to be half an hour late like my last mock board patient.

I learned what a pain it is to do a physicians consult. I had a pt. with high blood pressure that was deaf. It was hard to communicate just through writing things down. I was just having a hard time understanding who the Dr. was that I needed to contact and then I found out that the pt. was taking medications that had not been written on the health history that were important for me to know. I didn't get to see this pt. today. I know this was not a good appointment for me or the patient. Things were just a little confusing.

Sensitivity

Today I had a good 1B patient. The patient had some sensitive areas on the distal of teeth #2 and #16. I put Varnish on them to see if that would help with desensitizing. There was a tiny bit of recession on the distal of those teeth, but no where else. My instructor said that what might have caused that would be impacted third molars because my patient had the third molars taken out and didn't have recession anywhere else. I just had never thought that that would cause sensitivity.

Third molars

Today, I took two full mouth x-rays on patients with all of their wisdom teeth.  On the first patient I didn't really think I needed to get all the way back to the third molar on the PA, but I retook it to see if I could get it back there.  I took eight molar x-rays ( on two patients)  and it is possible to see all three molars on a PA!  It just takes a little effort to get the film where you need it to be.  

Remembering how to sharpen

I learned today that one month off will make me have to recall things like sharpening my instruments. I was trying to sharpen one instrument and it just didn't feel right and I couldn't think of how to make it feel okay. Finally, I switched my instrument to the other hand and I was able to get the job done. Little things can make a big difference.