Radiology OSCE

So after last week's fabulous OSCE presentation by Cooke and Kim, I realized I had to step up my game a bit. Great job ladies!!

I have been putting the finishing touches on the OSCE, and hope that it is ready to go for tomorrow.

I finally have a QA topic...I am planning on updating the Exit Interview Survey the senior students fill out. It is currently just a few open-ended questions, so I am trying to figure out a way to ask more specific items in a way that they will be valuable and measurable also. If anyone has any ideas of questions they think would be beneficial, I am open for suggestions!

Time to get back to the OSCE, hope we can live up to last week's great presentation!! 

See everyone Monday! Wishing for sunshine!!

Spring finally???

Hello all,

So my surprise long weekend, of course, was just not long enough!! Here it is Sunday evening, and I am just beginning to sit down to my homework! Wherever does the time go?!? Always seems like when there is so much of it available, it leaves in big chunks!!

Anyway, I'm basking in the glow of the last few minutes of sunshine and happy because I got to play outside with my nephews today!! The absolute hilarity of watching a 20 month old search for easter eggs without understanding why he's doing it made me giggle all day. But, now it is time to buckle down and concentrate on these last few weeks.

After last week's craziness of getting all my presentations and papers done for other classes, this class was put on the back burner. I have worked on the OSCE a bit, but have not done anything yet for the QA assignment. Hoping a bright idea will just come to me! I'm excited to hear Kim and Cooke's OSCE layout tomorrow night (you'll be fabulous!) in the hopes it will solidify my thoughts and ideas. I need to round up a full set of radiographs before I can really establish all of my protocol and guidelines, but I am hoping to solidify that this week.

I am also putting the finishing touches on my Day Sheet so I can check that off the never ending "To-do list"!! Hope you all had a great Easter and a wonderful weekend! 

Only 4 weeks left!!

Counting down the weeks...

OK ladies...

I'm really having a hard time coming up with any GREAT ideas for the QA assignment.  I have a couple ideas, but nothing that I really think is good enough to spend my time on. I guess that means nothing has quite interested me enough to want to work on it yet. So...I really have nothing to report there. 

As far as the Clinic Day Sheet goes, I appreciate all your feedback on that! This is kind of fun to work on...I like the idea of having a very explicit scoring mechanism, so there is not a lot of wavering and thinking it though if you are the faculty member doing the grading. And also, the students will understand exactly what is expected from them, and there will be no question about why they did not get all the points if they didn't complete all the tasks they should have.

So, that brings us to the OSCE...I started out with a bang on this, but I feel like I'm really losing steam. I really appreciate all the feedback on this as well.  I have put it aside for a couple weeks, and now it is time to tackle it again.  I think that is what I will focus on this afternoon, so hopefully I will have a better idea of how this is going by the time we get to class tomorrow.

Hope you are all doing well! Just 5 weeks left until the end of the semester!! I feel like one of the undergrad students! Looking forward to the warm up later this week after the unwanted snow this morning! See you tomorrow!!

Clinic Day Sheet

Hello ladies!

As I'm sitting here all snuggled up in my fuzzy socks and blanket, wishing it were warmer than 40 degrees outside, I had an epiphany! Last year, I started creating a checklist for the students I was working with in clinic. It was mainly because the May grads had basically "checked out" mentally and continued to overlook or disregard things I had been repeatedly asking them to do...So, I made a checklist of all the things they needed to do prior to me coming in for an initial or final check. It is an extensive list, but I got so tired of the same small things not being completed. In my mind this told me that the students deemed these items as unimportant. I didn't feel that this was acceptable seeing as how these students would be joining the professional workforce in a few short months. I wanted to show them that each item we ask them to do is important and done for a reason.  

I came across the checklist last week, and I am going to try to incorporate it into the Clinic Day Sheet we are developing for this class. Like I said, it is quite an extensive list and I doubt most of the faculty I work with would want to take this task on daily, but I thought I would give it a shot and see what type of transformations it can take before it is a final product...should be interesting! See you Monday!

Another Sunday

OK ladies, 

I'm trying to stay positive, but I think I have hit that spring slump. I am so ready for spring, that every time it get cool or the dirty "snow" word is said again, i get a little bummed out. So, I know I am not always a pleasant person to be around this time of year and I hope that I'm not bringing everyone else down...

Anyway, I have started working on the radiology interp OSCE. I'm really kind of excited about doing this. I think interps are one of the things students struggle with the most in this program. I know from personal experience that I did not feel confident in my interp skills when I graduated DH school. Luckily I worked with a wonderful DDS right out of school that taught me a TON about reading radiographs. I never knew just how much you can know about a patient and the status of their oral health before even seating them in the chair. I think learning how to read radiographs and do it well is something that will really put our students at an advantage. Students can really learn a lot from a set of radiographs and I feel that this will help them with their diagnosing and treatment planning skills. I am excited to get the OSCE done if only for my own personal gain.

Hope you all had a great weekend! Think warm thoughts!!

CC management

Ok ladies, I got ahold of Lynn Getz at Madison (MCTC) regarding the way their program handles tracking "continuous care" patients.  Since I did this via email, I'm not 100% certain that she understood my questions, or that I understood her responses, but I'll pass along what I THINK we are both talking about...

From what I understand, the students are primarily the ones responsible for keeping track of their CC pts.  The DH students are informed of the need to really follow ALL of their patients through all of their appointments until the DH student graduates.  Lynn suggested that since their program is much smaller and deals with many less patients than the U of MN, the opportunity for pts to get "lost" in the system is probably not as much of a concern as it is here.  Students really the ones in charge of calling their pts to get them back in for their recalls.  The "group directors" get updated lists of the names of pts their students have treatment planned and provided some type of treatment on.  The students are responsible for updating this list with their group directors a few times each semester, and show the instructor what the treatment plan was, what the student has completed, and what the next step/recall is.  Although the focus is for the students to really take responsibility of keeping these patients in the system, the clinical instructors/group directors are there to help nudge the students and make sure they are doing this.  At the end of the year, when the "senior" class graduates, the patients are assigned to a new student within the same clinic group.  This helps ensure the patients are seeing the same faculty and DDS every time they come in for an appointment, so this adds another level of accountability, and hopefully, the faculty can help track patients in a non-structured way. 

I am hoping to visit Lynn at MCTC over spring break or after the end of the semester this summer, so if I can get more clear answers to some of my questions, I'll be sure to pass on the info to y'all.

Have a great weekend! See you all Monday!

IERC

Hello ladies...
Not sure about you, but I really enjoyed our tour of the IERC on Monday. Even thought I have been involved in the DH student OSCEs, it was still really cool to see the other areas instead of the tech room. And the medical rooms in the basement were very cool!! It is exciting to think about all the great learning that is happening under our feet every day, and that our building is on the forefront of teaching some leading doctors and nurses. I am excited to think about how we can potentially utilize the IERC for continued DH exams and testing of skills. After we left Monday evening, my mind started running of all the OSCE exams we could do for the DH classes (if money was not in the equation, of course) and how great the learning experience would be for the students!! We are very lucky to have this ability to conduct these types of exams, and after seeing all the "behind the scenes" stuff, it interests me even more now!