Being a Great Clinical Instructor

This course has helped me to gain an insight on the things that I need to improve on and has allowed me to set goals for myself. The one thing that I will focus on is making sure that I continue to educate myself on how to be a better clinical instructor. Learning how to interact with all the different personalities can be a challenge. I think if you respect and act professional with the students you can never go wrong. I know that even being a student we had to adjust to the different personalities of our full and part time instructors. I never want to be that one instructor that all the students dread to work with. I think it is important to show your students that you love you your profession and that your going to do everything in your power to make sure they succeed and walk away proud.
I want to be an excellent instructor yet a fun one, I know for myself it is always easier to build rapport with students and anyone when you allow yourself to have a little fun. Don't get me wrong , I want my students to still respect me and look up to me. Sometimes I feel like I need to still grow up a little bit even though I have two kids, so this is something I need to work on...but life is to short so I'm not in a big hurry.

Faculty Calibration

Thinking back to the article, I have mixed feelings of the authors opinion. First of all, I did not realize that we are in danger of not having enough clinical faculty in the near future. I know currently here in the Columbus area we are over populated with hygienist, so that statement was surprising to me. I thought the article was very one sided, in my hygiene experience I did not experience any instructor that wanted to move things quickly. They were very understanding of us being first year students. They took their time in teaching us the appropriate techniques, they not once ever make you feel like we were not fast enough .The instructors did expect more with speed and better techniques in our second year, but that was expected from everyone. I did not agree with the author when she stated it would be a good idea for each instructor to have the same way in teaching calculus detection or the statement that most hygienist are visual learners.There was a point in time when our instructors took a count of how many people learned different ways, and if I remember correctly most of the class raised their hand when " hands on learning" was asked. I would think she would need some research to back up her statement. With the calculus detection she advised that they all use the same technique, posture, pressure and sitting position. I believe that goes against what we just learned, in that everyone learns differently and we may have to modify different techniques in order to help someone learn better. I do feel that the grading aspect of the clinic does need to be more consistent with the faculty. I think that there needs to be a better method for grading that bring the faculty together to think on the same line.

Diversity

I believe our profession is not very diverse for a couple reasons; as lame as it sounds our title "dental hygienist" sounds very girlie. The same problem goes along with nursing as the book mentions, many men do not want to be called "nurses" it does not sound manly enough.If you think of other professions such as dentist, doctors, teacher, scientist all have titles that can easily fit both genders. I feel age also plays a role as to why it is not diverse in that aspect; our job is very repetitive which can lead to carpal tunnel and boredom. Many older people are aware if this and choose other fields to go into. In my hygiene class we had one male who entered the program for job security. I believe he lasted 3 weeks and felt it was to hard and dropped out, as to how often this happens I am not sure? Another guess to why we lack diversity maybe because we do not put the word out enough in areas that we need to? The classroom setting in low socioeconomic areas at an early age? I believe children start to think about what they want to do when they go up at an early age. If we could go and introduce the profession not only to elementary schools but high schools I think would help increase the interest in men.
I know when I talk to patients about our profession they mention how great it is for women who want kids and the the flexibility that it offers. Which is great, but that does not do anything to attract the men. We need to advertise the benefits of our profession that would entail both genders. I know that the hygiene program at OSU does not encourage students who are looking into the dental program to take hygiene as there minor. I am not sure that I agree with that, I think we would be able to recruit more men and older people if they did choose the hygiene program. They may realize they like this part of dentistry and do not have to go half as long for the schooling.

Communication

Communication is important and it plays in an important role in our everyday lives. The book mentions that listening is also an important part of communication and I know for myself this is something that I can improve on. As soon as someone communicates with me in a disrespectful manner my first reaction is to show them the same thing. This can also be a challenge in our profession, I have encountered many patients that think they know it all. They try to indicate in that I am wrong in some way and what they are stating makes sense, I laugh to myself and think "seriously I went to school for this". I enjoy reading the different scenarios the book offers. The instructors always respond in a calm professional manner. I do not know that I would have enough self control to stop, think, recognize what was being said, and think about how I would respond calmly. I wonder if this gets better with maturity or experience?

I can not think of a specific encounter in clinic that took place that involved not communicating well, but I will share one that took place in the class room setting. Every year the second year students are responsible for grouping themselves and coming up with a topic for table clinics. The best one would present their table clinic at the annual conferences in Newark. One instructor was responsible for informing us what all the rules and regulations were. The day of our practice run the other instructor asked why we were using name brands on our poster, we looked at her with blanks face and told her we had no idea what she was talking about. She asked who was responsible for informing us of the information. We informed her whom, she shook her head and said she would take care of it. I'm not sure what happened with the conversation between the head instructor and the other instructor but it would have been interesting to see what took place. Our group had to take our poster apart and had to redo it. I feel as a group we handled the situation in a very mature manner we did not start accusing or going off an a rampage for not being provided with the correct information. We allowed the higher up to take control and handle the situation. The instructor did end up apologizing to us and mentioned she though she had told us and it would never happen again.

Accreditation

Reading this article did make you think about how much work the schools have to put into the dental hygiene programs. The first thing that caught my eye was the how important it is to make sure they have a program administer who is well qualified. I thought maybe they picked someone who had the experience and that was it. According to the article they have set goals and responsibilities they need to follow to fulfil the position. I was a little confused when they mentioned they could only be in that position for no more than two years? I think this requirement is a good idea if it is the case. Rotating the years allow for different views and creativity.

The second thing that really make me think was there were really no set number for how many patients each student had to see? I thought they were responsible for this, they only mentioned needing to see a certain amount. I have heard of different schools having different requirements for how many patients of each classification students need to see. I feel it would be better if all the schools had an same number of patients. This makes some schools seem more competitive than others.

Scenarios

#1. Mary seems to be a well prepared student with a great attitude and I would encourage her to keep it up. I would tell Mary that she was missing one more important thing in her treatment plan, I would have her go back and read the medical history over. If she still was not able to figure out what it was, I would ask her " What do we need to have the patient do if they have had a joint replacement?" I would then make sure Mary understood why we premed and have her tell me what could happen if we did not to do this. I would take a couple points off for this mistake, I feel the student needs to understand that this is an important matter. I would have Mary tell me why I was taking points off to make sure we were on the same page. I would be the clinic instructor that hopes the students will learn from their mistakes the first time around, the second time around if the same scenario occurs then I would give a lower grade.

#2. It sounds like I had a rough day and I would do my best not to take this out on my students. I would be very patient with Ben and kindly tell him that I found some calculus then have him try to use tactile sensitivity to locate it. If he was not successful, I would sit in his place, show him where I found it, then have him locate it to make sure he could feel it. I would than try to modify his technique to see if that would help him.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking in opinion is the ability to solve complex problems, requiring deep thinking while challenging your reasoning. I feel this assignment takes some critical thinking in how to help others think critically. What I got out of the handbook concerning this topic was how to ask and answer questions to make one apply the knowledge they have retained. I know that in clinic our instructors made us critically think whenever we had patients who were on medications. If the patient were on a certain medication we had to look it up in the medical dictionary to determine exactly what it was used for and learn about the side effects. If they had anything that seemed unusually in the mouth then we were responsible for finding out what it was and how we could fix it. For every new medication we had to make a flash card and be prepared to use it if any problems ever occurred. I can recall a time when I had a patient that had Alzheimer's disease, he could not hold his toothbrush, he could not understand a thing I was saying and he had the mentality of a three year old. Being a first year student this was a challenge for me, not only cleaning his teeth but putting a treatment plan together. The instructor asked me questions such as " What different techniques can we use in order to get his teeth cleaned and are there any ideas we can use to help him brush his teeth daily at home?" I ended up having to use a bite block each time he came in and we involved his wife with his home care.

I think we can help students critically think by picking one patient each morning who will be challenging in some way and having the students all come up with how they could make it better than discussing it at the end of the day. This would require critical thinking throughout the day and the opportunity to help each other. It would also allow the students to see other students perspective bringing out some creativity. I think it is important to know your students and figure out how each one learns in order to decide what is going to be a challenge for that student. What may be critical thinking for someone may not be for another. In our second year of clinic we had an opportunity to work with a home health care center for the mentally handicapped. We were in groups of three and each group was assigned a person. We had to analyze this patient and decide mentally where they were, and what they were capable of doing physically. We spent several hours talking and getting to know them. We had to figure out what they needed to improve on orally and we had to come up with ideas on how we could get them to remember what they needed to improve. We presented our cases to our classmates and shared the appliances that were modified for each individual. Critical thinking was definitely something we had to use.