Opportunity to be a Clinic Instructor

If I were a clinic instructor at this moment I think I would want the students to feel as if I was a knowledgeable, respectful, compassionate, and a considerate teacher. I know a lot of knowledgeable teachers from dental hygiene, we all do, school is rough and rigorous. Yet, for a teacher to be knowledgeable and carry the other qualities is not always seen. I would want students to feel as if they could always ask me any questions without feeling as if I would judge them or make them feel less of a person. I would also want to be that teacher that a student wouldn't be afraid to have them grade a scale competency. Not that I would be an easy grader, just that I would explain to them areas that are harder, show them ways to use the instrument in that area more efficiently and give them more help until they truly understand it. My goal would to be to go above and beyond teachers that I thought were magnificent in school. To always strive to be better every day. While reading chapter 11 in the handbook I realized to be a good instructor you have to be constantly asking  questions to yourself. "Did I see learning patterns?", "Did I always give feedback?", "Was I fair?", "Did the students learn anything?" I think asking your self these questions will help you to always be progressing as an instructor. If you do nothing to change you will never be effective as a teacher.  Although it is true not all the students will like you, respect you or even listen to you; if you strive to be your best and keep your eyes and and ears open for questions and improvements I believe anyone could be an amazing clinic instructor.

Diversity

I believe that it is true that there is no diversity in dental hygiene. Not because of the given facts but also because of experience. The class above me had 0 men, 1 black person, 4 people over 30, and one girl from India. My class had 0 men, 2 black people, and 5 people over 30.  The class below me had a husband and wife over 30, 0 black people and 2 other students over 30. I remember my senior year the other black girl and I were asked to be in a flyer and a commercial with the husband and wife from the class below us. This was to show diversity at school in our dental hygiene class. I do think that it was a good idea to get people to see the diversity by getting the few diverse people in the class to sponsor the entire program. Yet, if you think about it, out of the three classes I met 17 people were diverse out of each class having 26 people accepted into it each year. So showing that we were diverse was not entirely accurate. While reading chapter 8 I felt bad for the male student who did not know how to help the new mother breast feed. It seems like it would be hard for him to relate to her and still make her feel uncomfortable. I'm sure not all male nurses are afraid of this situation but it is probably a big situation that arises. I myself was reading the part about cultural beliefs and religions and felt that would be my biggest problem. Everyone has some time of belief and it is hard not to offend some one else on theirs. Things we find normal in America are not always the same in another country. Like China it is not polite to give eye contact I believe I need to give everyone eye contact because of how I was raised. It is very important to learn about all the cultures and rituals we can because throughout our hygiene careers we will work with many different people and we need to have knowledge of how to work with them.

Calibration +/-

While reading "Article G" I felt that they hit the nose on the head with the new and old faculty. I remember first semester we only had the "seasoned faculty" they taught us the long over lapping slow method to detect calculus and of course for root planing. However I kind of liked the fact that we learned the slow and detecting method because once we were seniors they had younger and more private practice based clinical instructors teaching what they called the "real" way to scale. I am glad to learn the slow and long way for initial training but it was also nice to see what is being asked for in an office. I think the fast way did help me to scale an easy patient because the older teacher would have us bring in the easiest patient four times to clean their teeth but if you had a newer teacher she would say okay this patient has minimal calculus, you have a half an hour. So it was nice to get both sides of the field. This was by chance not on purpose that it happened in this order. I think if I were a first year hygiene student that I would be freaking out if a teacher showed me and told me to finish an easy patient super fast and I am sure I would miss all the calculus. I think calibration is important because it was stressful working on a patient but having to change you style for each teacher. Senior year we all talked about which teacher we wanted to grade us and which teacher to stay away from. It was almost more stressful to worry who was going to grade you then to actually scale. It would be nice if there was some sort of method to keep the faculty on the same page because all the students have to be on the same page.

Communication

My story about miscommunication is a little bit embarrassing but I think it is something that everyone should know and how to avoid it from happening in the future. In chapter seven we learned how to communicate effectively and with sensitivity. It stated that students can respect faculty who can admit they were wrong. This is true because I have been in a situation where both the teacher and I were wrong.
        One day in clinic my closest friend was having a bad day. I walked past her operatory and asked her if everything was okay because she was in a panic and looked as if she were crying. As soon as I asked her if everything was okay she said, "why who said something to you." I did hear earlier from another student that two of our clinic instructors talking about her but I had no idea why and didn't give any names.  All I said was I don't know what's going on but there is buzz about you and you seem flustered and I wanted to know what is going on. Well my friend went up to the teacher who was talking about her and said Ashley Perry said you were talking about me and I want to know why!
       My communication mistake was admitting I had heard the gossip about her! Her communication mistake was saying that I named a teacher and said they were talking bad about her. 
      I was in the sterilization room going about my business when the teacher who my friend ran told came bustering up to me. She slammed her fist on the table and screamed at me in front of patients, students and other faculty members. "How dare you tell another student that I was talking about her, It was none of your business. Stay out of other peoples conversations you get a zero for the day." Well my day was ruined. I went from knowing nothing about this whole situation between the instructor and my friend and just inquiring from a friend what was going on, to being blamed for ease dropping. Little did the teacher know that I had heard the information from another student and all I was doing was making sure my best friend was okay. I was called into the director of dental hygiene's office and scolded very badly. I was not even aloud to plead my case. I received a zero for the day and also was given and "I". (At our school if you get three "I's" though out the program you are kicked out.) I really did not know what to do about this situation, the teachers would not listen to me and my friend felt bad for saying my name and changing the story but I did not want to listen to her. It was a whirl wind of miscommunication. This reminded me of clarifying expectations my friend did not have the correct professional approach when telling the teacher she heard gossip about herself. My instructor used the aggressive approach when confronting me. 
    Eventually I talked everything over with my mom and she suggested I write a letter since know one cared to listen. I pleaded my case that I did not know what was going on and that I had heard from another classmate that two teachers were gossiping about my friend and I was just helping out a crying classmate. I told them that none of that is in my character to want to make up rumors or ever even want a teacher to think I would make them look like a bad person. I apologized for the miscommunication throughout that whole day. I sent it to the two instructors involved in the whole conflict and they both apologized to me and said they too were caught up in emotions and did not think before they spoke. It was nice to see them let their guard down and admit they were in the wrong. Especially because these were two of the toughest teachers in the school.
    Looking back at this situation I realized that if my friend would not have ran up to an instructor and falsely accused me of ease dropping then my instructors would not have felt so attacked by the student. The teacher was feeling attacked so she immediately attacked me. What should of happened was the instructor pulling us both to the side and asking us what exactly was going on. Clarifying the situation would of saved everyone a lot of time and stress. My zero for the day and "I" was taken away thankfully but because of all this miscommunication a lot of people's days were ruined.

The Evaluation Process!

1#    In this weeks readings we learned about coaching. Coaching comes to mind for this subject in the argument that I would need to recognize the uniqueness and relationship I have with that student. I would have to coach encouragement. As it says, "Encouragement- When simple or brief corrections are needed. Intended outcome- to improve performance." Although this is a big deal I would not get mad at the student for missing one step. I would have to encourage her to use her critical thinking skills and ask the student "Why did your patient have a knee replacement?" Before signing her radiographs. Hopefully this would take her mind back to the joint replacement and remember to ask if he needed a pre-med. This way I am giving the already bright student a chance to quickly correct her mistake before moving on. If she does not realize her mistake I would have to give her a targeted learning contract of re-reading the dental hygiene clinical book with the chapters over joint replacements and the procedure of treatment. I would make the student write a paper of why it is important that a joint replacement patient be pre medicated. I would have to grade the student based on her report.




2#  I feel like my bad day has nothing to do with the students. So I would not get mad that the student has missed seven pieces of calculus. Depending on what year the student is I would have to grade accordingly. A first year student I would make them hold on to my hand lightly and to feel what I feel. This way they can get the feel of calculus and the correct way to explore the area. I would show them how to adapt the explorer into the overlapping areas of the teeth. I would then have them show me and give them a second chance. I would write down the areas of the teeth that I found calculus and tell them to get me as soon as they believe they are finished. If it were a senior who has already had a similar situation and should have learned the instrumentation of exploring I would fail them. The first question I should ask my self would be "What learning objective or expectation hasn't been met?" (122, HCT). This senior student would not only fail the patient but be given a remediation of finding another patient compatible to the classification of the failed patient. This will give the student another chance to scale, but hopefully the student will realize on their next patient to take their time while exploring.

A classmate of mine could not make it to table clinics so she was made to find remediation by going to Cherry Valley for annual session and giving her speech there. I went along with her because annual session is fun and our topic was pretty hard!

Accreditation

While reading the ADA accreditation document I passed over "Patients with special needs." The school I went to was located across the street from government housing so we were very blessed to get a variety of patients. Patients being very easy to very difficult. I was very happy to be so lucky to work on a variety of patients but I thought it was just location. I always wondered why we needed a special needs patient, child, and geriatric patient just because we always had so many diverse people in our school. I now realize its nationally needed. For a good reason too because I think its better to be well rounded and ready for the real world. Another accreditation I thought was made up by teacher was ADPIE. I thought they made the whole acronym up their self. It was very good way for us to get information on each patient. We had to fill out an ADPIE sheet on each patient every day and it helped us to treatment plan each patient correctly. Other than those two I pretty much understood the other accreditations because our program administrator was a huge STICKLER for the rules. If anything was broken or misunderstood we were quickly reminded.

Education

Starting off as a dental assistant I realized that most things we learn in school are not used in most practices. So I already had a head start on the things "I" believed were more important to keep in my memory, not saying that was the smartest idea. Yet, a couple things I kept fresh in my memory included local anesthesia and Periodontal issues compared with the systemic link. I have only given Local anesthesia to one patient outside of school yet I felt completely prepared. As weird as it sounds I brought in a chart we made in class that gave all the locations for different areas to anesthetize. It also told me whether to use a long or short needle, angulation, depth, and amount. I am very happy that I thought to save this chart because it truly was a life saver, for me and the patient. The patient was very happy said they felt no pain and no anxiety which is good meaning I held composure and did not let them know that they were my first patient! Another important lesson I brought with me from school to the office was the Oral systemic link. My perio teacher pushed the subject on us so much I can't help but to remember. I feel totally comfortable teaching each and every patient the concerns of periodontist and how it relates to the rest of their body. I believe the quote is true. I do not remember everything from school I honestly think I remember less than 50% of the material yet I feel like I have a very good education. I can talk clinically to a group of scholars and I can teach a novice important material. Critical thinking and problem solving go hand in hand and are used for different situations I don't believe that one is better than the other but that they help the person analyze a situation to find out the answer. Both are used in the dental hygiene setting to find out what is causing halitosis to finding out a solution to get your patient to be more attentive to their oral health care.