Beginner's Luck

Dental school is a process. When you come to school your first year, you know nothing about dentistry. No matter how many dentists you have watched or how many procedures you have assisted with, when your clumsy fingers pick up that drill or probe they will not know what to do with them--guaranteed.

Lucky for you, my future patients, every dental student goes through a process. During the first and second years, dental students work only on plastic teeth in the lab, and on each other. In this way, many lives (teeth) are saved.

Fortunately for us, San Antonio Dental School no longer allows students to practice giving intraoral injections on each other. (They used to, but some student at another dental school caused permanent paralysis on a classmate, a lawsuit followed, etc...don't you hate it when one person ruins the fun for everyone?) Fortunately for my future patients, San Antonio Dental School does allow (and, in fact, requires) that we work on our classmates on less invasive procedures like periodontal screenings (gums check-ups) and cleanings.

Today was my group's day to rotate in the periodontal clinic and work on each other. There are always certain beginner's mistakes that are committed and corrected during these times--after all, that is what these sessions are designed to do; however, today's rotation had more fun than the usual "Ouch! Too hard!" exclamations.

While taking my turn as the patient, I heard one of my other classmates yell to her friend, "Eww! Your hair is in my nose!"

...and that goes on everyone's top ten list of things you don't want to hear from your patient if you are the dentist.

The girl who was working on the now-grossed-out classmate has very long hair, and didn't realize that while she leaned over to get a better look at the teeth, her beautiful locks had fallen directly into her patient's nasal cavity. I'm pretty sure that violates some of our infection control protocols.

Another issue facing "beginner" dentists is that of proper posture while working on teeth. A huge percentage of dentists have debilitating or career-ending musculoskeletal disorders caused by improper posture, so our professors are working very hard to ensure that we all learn good habits at the beginning so that we never have these issues.

In an attempt to encourage good posture and musculoskeletal health, one of our course directors decided to implement a 5-minute stretching session during each of our lab meetings. The course director appointed a dentist who assists in teaching the course to lead the stretching exercises. Our designated stretcher, as chance would have it, does NOT speak English as a first language, so on one of his first days leading our exercises we were all shocked and a little offended when he asked us to, "Take your pants down."In reality he had said, "Take your hands down," but everyone thought he said the former (and some felt obligated to do as he asked).

A not so funny thing about school? Two quizzes tomorrow and a midterm on Friday...

Break time is over!