Mockboard 2 out of 3

I cannot believe that I passed my mockboards.  First of all, I didn't think that I was going to find a mockboard patient and then to find one on 3 days before and pass I feel so much better.  I just hope this is how the real test goes.  I am ok with an 88%.  I just need to remember to really clean the anterior teeth.  I tend to forget the anterior teeth on mockboards.  For some reason I hurry and clean the anterior teeth and then focus most of my attention on the posterior teeth.  I think that I would have done better if I would have tried to take the full amount of time.  I kind of ended early because I just wanted to be done.  I just need to remember to really smooth the teeth as much as I can and take as much time doing it.  I was happy to hear that my probing depths were good and my recession was right.  It is really crazy to think that I only have 1 more mockboard before the real deal. I hope that I find my real board patient before the next mockboard so that I can get a feel for what it is going to be like before boards.

Like butter

Today I learned that some people can generate some awesome calculus that falls off like butter in less than 3 months.  I am so grateful for KaDee.  The name was wrong and I ended up stealing her patient.  I definitely owe her a class III easy patient if I can ever find one.  Today I had to remove a lot of calculus and I think that I am getting better at detecting calculus with my explorer and going deep enough to get the calculus off.  I am learning to love my ultrasonic more every time I use it.  I am usually against using my ultrasonic but It has really started to help me with removing calculus especially the tenacious calculus that has been attached to a tooth for many years.  I just can't believe how young my patient was and how many teeth he had missing.  He was in his 30's and was missing at least 9 teeth, not including his wisdom teeth.  I think that is the hardest part about being a dental hygienist.

Some patients are Evil (like the fruits of the devil)

I have learned that sometimes people are just going to act bipolar and I can't do anything about it except for not to let it get to me.  It was a difficult thing to learn but probably not the last time that I will learn something like this.  I am just grateful that my father-in-law could show at last minute and be the best patient, especially after one of the emotional day of my life.  It is really the only thing that I learned today but I am glad that I learned this now instead of latter in my career.

Mockboard patient....Gone

Sometimes I question why I am going into this profession.  I had a patient that I would never want to deal with.  She was one of those patients that felt that she knew more than me and wouldn't listen to anything that I would tell her.  She continually told me that she needed a scaling and not a cleaning.  I asked her if she could be my mockboard patient and she told me yes and then after taking x-rays and getting her ready for mockboards she decided to tell me that she couldn't be my mockboard patient.  I seriously do not need to deal with patients like that this semester.  I have to find two mockboard patients and one board patient.  I don't need to be wasting my time with people who do not understand that they are coming to a learning facility and that is why it is cheaper than a normal dentist office.  She wanted the deal but she didn't want to go through the steps that I had to go through. Then she complained to the front desk about how slow I was.  Not the fact that she had a HHX that was ridiculously long and I had to continually tell her that I was saving her right side for mockboards and I was going to do her left side when she came back after mockboards.  I learned an important lesson today....only call people from the resource list because they know what they are getting themselves into.  People who are referred from a regular office expect the school to be just like a regular office.