Thursday, November 17, 2005

Clinic Journal #17

I am almost done with my requirments and I am so excited. I only need like two kids and I have those schedules. I feel so bad for all those people who don't have all there requirments. We need to know what is going to happen if we don't meet them. I know that it is bad to think about it but for these instances when some people are not going to meet them no matter how hard they try, we need to know what the protocol is and what we as students can do and need to do to prepare for next semester. I was very fortunate this semester but I feel that I am going to be in the same situation as some of the other students next semester. My patients today we all really excited that I was able to get all quads complete in one appointment when last time they came in the girl who cleaned them took two appointments, that must mean that I am doing a great job!!!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

clinic journal #16

Today Heidi Law and I shared one patient because she is going to be one of our back up board patients. We took a full mouth xray on her which we shared and it was so much fun also, our patient spoke spanish so I got to use my spanish-english dictionary for the first time and it was pretty awesome. Anyway, I decided to scale two quadrants because she was a class two and heidi did not need class two requirments. It was pretty tough calculus but we were able to get everything done except for the calculus deposit that was between #14 and #15 because it is a heavy deposit and can be used for an extra tooth if we decide to use this patient for boards.

One thing that has come up in clinic is the problem with Professor Green at the VA. It seeems that everyone that had her for there instructor did not get any of their requirments completed. They still have a lot of quads of class two and three. how can it be so different between all the other professors and her. She should be more compassionate toward us because she just graduated and she knows the requirments that we have. Difficulty does not always have to be based on "by the book" rules. Difficulty depends on so many factors and I think that professor green may need to take those into consideration. I am nervous for next semester because I have her as an instructor and I think that we might bash heads on this subject. I hope that the professors can "calibrate" and help us meet our requirments instead of shoving authority in our faces.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

clinic journal #15

So I experienced something pretty interesting today with my first patients health history. My patient presented himself with needing prophylaxis antibiotics for a joint replacment but Dr. Hopkins thought that since it had been like five years already that he didn't need it. I asked others in clinic and they said two years after a joint replacment and I thought that it was six years but we were about to call his physician just in case but then marie brought me back his updated health history and to our amazment, this patient had just had a stroke two weeks ago. So that was pretty interesting. Anyway, I talked to my patient about it and he said that it was only a slight one and that he went to the doctor and that his doctor said that he was fine and that they couldn't find anything wrong with him. Anyway, he was pretty upset that we couldn't treat him, according to Dr. Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins said to wait six months because any kind of stress could cause another stroke and maybe even a worse one. I kept trying to explain to my patient that we only have these policies in our clinic for his protection and for his own health. But he made sure that I knew that if he had a choice that he would prefer to have treatment today and that it was our institution that was preventing him from having treatment. Oh well, experience with all sorts of patients with all different personalities is good practice. We were joking around and said that we would walk out of clinic and find him like passed out in his car because we cause him undue stress by not working on him because he was so uptight about it and that we would be the ones to cause him to have another stroke but that did not happen, and it is not even a funny thought but it kind of made us laugh!