The Dental Health Education Video.

• The purpose of this assignment was to self evaluate the clinician’s communication skills between the clinician and the patient. The assignment helped me to realize proper treatment is not just a task that has to be completed because myself or the patient is told to do so.  This assignment helped me understand that there are many parts of properly communicating to others and different types of communication to achieve effective communication. One example of this is building confidence and trust with a patient. A Clinician must always be aware of verbal and non-verbal communication and it is critical that a clinician does not bind to gender-based communication or be discriminatory. A patient is always part of treatment and needs to continuously listen to, and observe, in order to establish and maintain rapport. These are essential in order to have a compliant patient. I am proud to say that over the course of the program, with a lot of help from this assignment, I was able to grow as a clinician with the ability to properly communicate verbally and non verbally. Being able to communicate with my patient made me grow in confidence in clinic, and gave me the ability to work faster, smarter, and better.

Radiographic Interpretation Self Assessment

• The purpose of this competency was to learn the importance of using radiographs as a diagnostic tool not only for the clinician but also for the patient.  Proper identification of normal and abnormal anatomy is a must for proper interpretation. The clinician had to establish a base point to where the patient had an idea of what anatomy features they were looking at. The clinician was also responsible for stating the patient’s periodontal case type and how radiographs are used in conjunction with radiographs.  From there, the clinician had to identify and describe the appearances of any type of restorations, dental materials, foreign objects, caries, trauma, pulpal lesions, periapical lesions. This assessment really helped me realize that a picture is worth a thousand words. Not just because I, the clinician, understand the images and assessment of the issues does not mean that the patient is able to understand what is going on in that picture. With that being said, this learning experience helped me understand how it feels to be sitting in the chair and how effective interpretation is everything when it comes to teaching patient education. As the clinician one has to be able to find a good balance for the patient in order for them to feel involved in their treatment being provided by the clinician.