Just took first test

I just took the very first test of my Dental Hygiene career and I passed! I am so excited right now! It's achievable, this is wonderful. Now I have to gear up for the other two tests to come in the next few days. I really like this set up though of no Radiology class so that we can take the test, but still have Hygiene class for the review. I think it works great.

The PEs are getting harder

I have found that the Pe's are slowly getting harder. The HHX was definantly more difficult, I don't even know if I've passed yet! Although it was time consuming I did learn a few things from it. I think the next step in driving home the concept of Health Histories is to give us the Health History form already filled out (just like the PE) and then in class, do a timed thing for 5 or 10 minutes and say go as fast as you can trying to be as accurate as you can and fill in the Patient record right there. That does need to be critiqued by Instructors too so that we can again learn from our mistakes, but it should not be graded so that we don't stress.

The HHXRX

I think I am the only one having trouble with this portion of the Health History. I breeze right through the HHX, But I sit and stare at the HHXrx for hours wondering where I begin, and have all these questions. I know I will probably fail the Health History PE beacause of it that is due on Monday. I wish we got back our Case Studies so that I could kind of look over it and see where to go. I guess I'll just chalk one up to fail. I sad part is it's my husbands birthday and all I am doing is studying.

Why do Tuesdays always overwhelm me?

Every Tuesday I get a new wave of panick because I feel like I have too much to do and not enough time. Between group projects and everything else I'm a little overwhelmed again! I am doing a really good job about spreading the word about needing patients, but I need my business card to had out. I hope that people pull through for me so that I am not left begging patients off of other people. I decided I do need a watch too so that I can take pulse and respiration well.

UDHA

Wow, the guy that looked like Al Gore was totally boring. Everyone was falling asleep! The first part of his speech totally conviced me NOT to join UDHA. The our Katie came over and sat at our table and in the 2 minutes she was there gave convincing reasons to join. Although the speech was not cool, the rest of the convention was alot of fun to be with everyone.
P.S. I really loved doing the extra oral exam. It was like a little facial massage. My husband won't let me practice on him though so one of my neighbors will have to be my guinee pig.

Vital Signs

I feel so smart now, like a real medical personel. I can take blood pressure and pulse, and I can also take respiration and pretend like I'm not staring at their boobs! He, He, He- that was for you Sarah! I went home and practiced on my husband and neighbors, not because I feel like I needed the practice, but because I was so excited that I finally learned how to do it!

I know this is how it is with every subject, but when a new idea has been breifly taught to me, I get scared like it will be so hard to learn or to master. Like how we have Dental Hygiene one day, but don't have lab till the next day or more to really drive home that idea and master it. The inbetween time intimidates me. But once we do get in lab and physically go over techniques with a TA looking over your shoulder correcting us, then I really learn the idea and feel much better about it. I'm actually really enjoying learning everything at this point.

PE's

The PE's are going so much better than I thought that they would. I imagined them to be so hard and that I wouldn't pass them the first time. But they are going O.K., that's not to say that I'm not totally nervous when I 'm doing them. They will for sure get harder though and then maybe I'll have to redo some. The patient charting kind of has me stresses out to. But I think this is a learning process and I won't be able to get them right all the time. My goal is to get the charting system down so that I can do it really fast, and it won't eat up my whole time if I have a pt. in the chair.

big wave

I feel like a big wave of work and study and projects and meetings is coming at me. I can see it coming and i can feel the begging of it and I'm really scared that I might drowned. With all the different classes and all the different little and big things we have to keep straight, it's hard. There is too much stuff that I have to read, so I have to pick and choose what I feel is most important to read and study. I think I will be ok, just not the top of the class. This coming Lab we will be learning about charting dental history and such. My Goal is to be able to know all the little abbreviations to put on the chart like BID (twice per day) and BIN(twice per night). Also my other goal for the further out future is to have all the medical history done before the patient comes into my chair. I can achieve this by finding a patient way early, and mailing them the patient history to fill out early, then I can fill out what I need to before the actuall exam and call their doctor if I need to.