February Blog

I was calming down a new patient for their treatment in Pomona, and the patient was getting worried about having to numb her mouth. But since I was already a patient as well as knowing the technique that the doctor does to the patient when injecting the syringe, I explained to them that it goes really quick and painless, and the patient was beginning to relax. One of the nurses helped me more by going into more in depth on what else the doctor does in the procedure with the injection, to make it painless as possible they heat up the medicine to match the body temperature so the patient doesn't feel that cold medicine being injected in. Once the patient was in the chair and the doctor was injecting the numbing medicine, the doctor shakes the patient's cheek to distract as she injects the syringe. After a couple minutes of waiting for the numbing to come into affect, I was asking the patient on the technique and she said it felt like a small mosquito bite. From their on she liked how they staff treated her like she was already a close member of the family, The patient was comfortably talking to the dental staff like she known them for a long time.

Answer: 2

1.  What is your EQ?

What is the best way to maximize retention of patients when running a dental clinic?

2.  What is your first answer?

The dentist can help the patient by comparing different medical organizations that help people with financial limitations.

3.  What is your second answer?

The dental staff must provide information for the patient when they are looking into different types of benefit plans that different agencies offer for certain demographics.  

4.  List three reasons your answer is true with a real-world application for each.

1. People have been saying that they fear of visiting the dentist due to the expenses of their treatments and unsure if they couldn't afford it.
2. Patients are still unaware of programs that could help them with finding the right healthcare plan. My mentor was discussing with one of the patients about the cost of the treatments and also referenced to her medical agencies that suit her eligibility.
3. Since people in the low demographic areas are less educated, especially immigrants, come here and have no idea on where to ask about finding them a suitable healthcare plan and also as well having a doctor talk to them in detail about what type of dental care plan is right for them since they might not know what questions to ask.

5.  What printed source best supports your answer?

• Hanks, Jody. "DECS: Experts in the Technical Side of Dentistry: Solving Operational Issues and Providing Guidance in the Dental Community." The Dental Assistant 78.3 (2009): 15-16. American Dental Assistants Association. Web. 2 Oct. 2014

6.  What other source supports your answer?

• Logan, Henrietta L., Yi Guo, Virginia J. Dodd, Christine E. Seleski, and Frank Catalanotto. "Demographic and Practice Characteristics of Medicaid-participating Dentists." Journal of Public Health Dentistry 74.2 (2013): 139-46. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.

7.  Tie this together with a  concluding thought.

Overall research and going with my mentor I was able to form my second answer because I witnessed how people in these clinics becoming afraid as they entered the clinic, unaware of the cost of treatments.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. I will continue to go to both my dental clinics, which is Smile Design and Trance & Dental Spa. I would still do my usual work routine in both clinics since I want to see what happens in the actual procedures and keep observing patients on their emtional state when coming to the dentist. Before the patients come in and sit in the dental chair, I would ask them if they are willing to participate in a local survey to provide research about how patients feel when coming to the dentist.

2. I will create at least 50 surveys in total but split the pile into 25 for each clinic since I want to start off small not knowing how the patients are willing to answer my survey. While creating the survey I would ask about the basic information about the patient themselves such as gender, age, ethnicity, religion, but I would not go any personal for them having to put their name, number, and address for the survey. After asking the basic questions of the patient's demographics, I would put some more emotional questions on how they feel when coming to the dentist.

3.  Explain how this component will help you explore your topic in more depth.
This will help me in my research and find out if the theories are true about people not visiting the dentist that often. I will be able to sort out the different groups of people and see what each one has in common with each other as well as what makes an actual patient fear or hate visiting the dentist. It would also help me see if high and low demographics have certain problems such as payments for the services for each clinic since all the treatments are the same pricing but just in different payment methods.

Independent Component 1

LITERAL

•  “I, Paulina Dominguez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
•  My sources are my mentors at these two different dental clinics that have helped me along the way during my independent component, one in pomona, while the other is in claremont.
•  For my independent component I worked half the 30 hours with the pomona dental clinic and claremont dental clinic, I observed the two and I was able to get hands on experience, seeing how new interns come in and help around in the dental clinics. I was able to sanitize the dental instruments, as well as wipe down the entire area of the dental chair when the doctor was finished with the procedure on the patient.  I was learning along the way on where the dental instruments are organized and help set up equipment for the next patient coming in. 

INTERPRETIVE
As I was working in these two dental clinics, I instantly noticed right away the big difference on how these clinics are similar yet when walking into them, totally seem different just by appearence.

For the first two photos are taken in the Claremont call Claremont Smile Design. The first picture where is the fron desk where patients come in to check in. And in the second picture is where for new patients get their whole mouth xrayed by this new device that can examine the entire mouth with its mechanical 360 degree feature. This saves so much time as well as having the xrays digitalized where the patient and doctor are able to see the results instantly without having to wait for it to process unlike other older machines.

Seeing the difference as these bottom two pictures are taken in the Pomona dental Clinic called Trance and Dental Spa. This picture is the front desk where as you can see how its more simplistic for family friendly envirmoment for low demographic areas. But considering this for most of the patients felt more eased because its simple enough for them to come in and mostly focus on what really goes behind the desk and notice more on the work experience instead of just appearence of the clinic.

The second photo is a machine where is the dental equipment go in and have the final process of sanitizing in its three step process I was able to work on during my hours. This machine is not really the newest version but it still does the same job as any other steam sanitization machine like the one in claremont. The difference is that this one is more manual where the one in claremont is more modernized with having  just buttons to make it easier to work with.
APPLIED
It made me realize as I worked in both dental clinics, noticing the obvious differences on how these dental clinic's appearence is and how different the staff works, but what makes them more interesting is how the pomona clinic were so connected with the patients for my independent component showed me more on how different dental clinics have different atomosphere as well as how much of the patient to doctor connection each one had. One of the doctors in the pomona explained how he works in a high paced dental clinic where you could barely have any close connection with one patient, in which the doctor's coinfidence decreases becauseof them not knowing if the patients come out of the dental clinic and truly understand the certain basic steps when maintaining a healthly mouth. This helped me create my EQ and understand why I chose my answer to focus more on the basic knowledge to families who are in need of services and programs to help spread awareness of this escalating issue in the dental world.