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!

Need some help...

Ok, I am trying to finish up my FMP protocol, and I am having a hard time finding the protocol for classifying perio as "generalized" or "localized"...I suddenly cannot remember if it's generalized if it is 8 or more TEETH, or 8 or more SITES, or if it is at 1/3 of the TEETH in the dentition affected in 1 site or more that makes it gen...

Can one of you please set me in the right direction? It's one of those things that the more I think about it, the less sure I am! 

Thanks for your help! Hope you're all enjoying your weekends!

FMP protocol

Hello Friends!

Well, after Monday's class, I have a much better idea of what direction I should be heading with this protocol.

After a long afternoon of reading research, I have found some articles to support my idea of performing FMP at every recall for Perio Therapy/Maintenance patients, as well as some articles that strongly advise FMP at every recall for all patients since some areas of bone loss have been shown to be random, and not necessarily due to obvious risk factors.

The other thing that I came across, which I never really thought too much about, was patients with diabetes or smokers.  We all know that these patients are at a high risk for periodontal disease, or increased progression of it, but I have never heard of any FMP protocol addressing these issues in an attempt to closely monitor changes in PDs or bone levels.

I know it may seem a little extreme, but I am now planning on implementing guidelines for smokers and patients with diabetes into the FMP protocol...why not? We're just throwing ideas out there right?  In a real world setting this type of protocol may not be realistic, but I thought I would try it just for fun.

Wish me luck! See you all Monday, hope you have a great weekend!!

Protocol

Hey everyone, 

Sorry this is so late...I was in WI rubbing a pregnant belly this weekend, and really didn't want to leave. 

I talked to Lynn Getz at the Tech College in Madison earlier this week, so I didn't ask about their FMP protocol.

The program accepts 36 DH students in the fall and includes 4 core semesters. Students are encouraged to take elective courses during the summer months so they are not trying to do them simultaneously with their core DH courses.

There are 6 FT DH faculty, and 15 PT faculty including 5 DDS from the community.  The PT faculty are not allowed to be more than 50% time, while the FT faculty are scheduled 5 days a week on campus. They are not allowed any days during the week for private practice work (they are expected to do this over the summer and during breaks), however, they are all scheduled one day without student contact to help develop courses and prep for clinics.  

I thought this was interesting because I know the U of MN allows one day during the week to stay active in private practice when they are FT.

I am trying to find some articles for support on the FMP protocol, but will not be ready with much for class tomorrow. My initial thought is that anyone who has had Periodontal Therapy should have probing measurements taken at every recall, but I don't really have any articles supporting this theory of mine. Hoping to have much more later this week.

See everyone at class.

Clinic Coordinator

Ok, so I'm a little disappointed in the responses I received, but I didn't email right away either, so that is my own fault. I tried to go visit the technical college in Madison, WI since I was there on Friday, but the program director was not going to be there that day. I talked to one of the two clinic coordinators on the phone, but I know she was on a time crunch, so some of the responses are a bit short. This is what I found out...

Like most of the schools you ladies have mentioned, there are two clinic coordinators - one for each class. 

Each coordinator is responsible for scheduling the students in the clinics and external rotations, faculty calibration, maintaining safety and OSHA regulations and protocols, making sure the first aid kits and emergency equipment is stocked and ready, monitoring sterilization, ordering new instruments, assessing success of clinic rotations and determining if changes need to be made, didactic teaching, keeping track of student evaluations and graduation requirements, meeting with students to discuss their progress, and remediation when needed.

Most of the clinic protocols are first developed by the clinic coordinators, then brought to the rest of the DH faculty at staff meetings for discussion and final revisions.

Communication seems to be an important aspect to MCTC's DH program. There are faculty meetings every other week, as well as email reminders sent out after the meetings.  

There are not as many employees at MCTC as at the U of MN, and it sounds like the lines of communication are very open, but also, other faculty members are willing to step in and help out when the coordinators need it.

That's the majority of the conversation...I am still hoping to visit this school the next time I am in Madison, since it is city I have been interested in relocating to previously, so I will try to get more information then.

Whew! I'm ready for bed! See you all tomorrow!

KJ

Who's ready to blog?!?

Hello class!
I am thinking nice, warm, sunny thoughts on this cold, dark, winter day. I'm beginning my countdown to spring, so be prepared to hear all about my plans to play when the snow finally starts to melt!
Not sure about this whole blogging thing, so please, try not to laugh at me! Or, if you do, make sure to laugh with me...
Cheers!
KJ