Dentaltown March 2015 - (Page 60)

hygiene feature From Scaling to Therapy: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DENTAL HYGIENIST Y ou're at a gathering and sooner or later you know that the dreaded question will be asked. "So, what do you do?" No hesitation here. You know what your profession is. You have a title, a position, a calling. But you weren't asked about your job title. You were asked, "What do you do?" When most people hear that you're a dentist or hygienist, you encounter a full disregard of the art and compassion that you put into your profession. People want to tell you about their bad experiences as a child or how much they hate you (but don't take it personally!) They just nod at your response and change the subject. You steer the dialogue back to the original question and the feel-good answer you've prepared: "I take care of people's teeth." This response elicits a smile of comfort and familiarity from your obligatory small-talk partner. The conversation can move forward now that your profession has been deemed socially acceptable. An hour later, driving home, you're blissfully alone with your thoughts, rewinding your earlier social interactivity, musing over the highlights and you ask yourself in hindsight, "What do I do?" I can't speak for dentists, but if you're a dental hygienist, you do some pretty strange things, actually. First of all, perfection to you is wave-shaped. It's the curve of a thin scallop of attached pinkness that anoints each interproximal space with a coral-tipped point of the healthiest gingiva imaginable. Anything less than this in your patients' mouths is limbo. Chaos is the reason your job exists, but you 60 MARCH 2015 // dentaltown.com by Trish Walraven, RDH, BS always hunger for order and balance. To achieve this imagined perfection in a mouth that is not optimal means you often resort to some diversions along the way. How do you handle the patient whose lower anterior linguals are piled with a couple of grams of Grade A calcium phosphate? Sure, you could just chunk the calculus off. But sometimes, when you're feeling a little dastardly, you carve out the top and the bottom of the tartar evenly, so that you've left a neat chalky white mustache, complete with curlicues. With artistic satisfaction, you turn your attention back to your duty and politely erase the Banksy-esque dental grafﬁti from your patient's teeth. This is not something you tell people that you do. You also keep it to yourself that your deepest fear is running into anything artiﬁcial while you're cleaning someone's teeth. Your ultrasonic scaler turns into a ﬁerce lead pencil in those situations, which means that not only are you wearing down your precious metal antennae into useless nubs, but you're also leaving dark lines where there was once only whiteness. Every last bit of old orthodontic cement has now been revealed like a charcoal rubbing, thanks to you. And you would never admit to leaving a grey streak on a brand-new porcelain crown. How could you slip like that? You hope like heck that the prophy paste will get that line off before anyone notices. When it comes to things that you enjoy, there's a bit of hesitation about sharing those stories as well. For instance, when you're hovering around the periapical abscess that's begging to be relieved? Or when you're spraying baking soda slurry under a bridge and the patient becomes aware that its odor speaks more than the thousand words that you could ever say about http://www.dentaltown.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown March 2015

On Dentaltown.com
Howard Speaks: 20 Feet from Stardom: Delegate like Jagger
Professional Courtesy: Married to My Profession
Continuing Education Update
Help Me Treatment Plan This Case
CBCT Technology: What Will the Future Bring?
New Luting Composite: Variolink Esthetic
Cone Beam 3D—Is It Really for Me?
Four Digital Marketing Mistakes that Impede Practice Growth
New Products
Poll
From Scaling to Therapy: A Day in the Life of a Dental Hygienist
The Value of a Dental Practice: Why Tracking “Attributable” Expenses Matters
I am Seeing a Lot of HPV Lesions in the Mouth Lately; What is the Protocol, Remove Them or What?
Dental Podcasts: What They Are and How They Work
Service Profi le: Garfi eld Refi ning
CE: Posterior Maxilla Implant Rehabilitation: A Challenging Task
Product Profile: Dentsply Caulking
Women in Dentistry: Intro
Women in Dentistry: Work/Life Balance: Flexibility and Creative Scheduling Go a Long Way
Women in Dentistry: The Lucy Hobbs Project
Women in Dentistry: Female Dentists in Conservative Muslim Nations Face Challenges and Threats
Women in Dentistry: The American Association of Women Dentists: Representing Women from Products to Leadership
Ad Index
Women in Dentistry: Q&A
Women in Dentistry: The Sky's the Limit: Hygienist Turned Entrepreneur Shows What's Possible
Product Profi le: SmartBox
Dentally Incorrect

Dentaltown March 2015