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Under One Umbrella

Throughout my years in UBC, table clinics had been a common procedure to promote oral health. However, I never attended one till today! Before this event, I did not really know what to expect. I had questions such as, will people be even interested in oral health? Will they just come to the table just to get toothbrushes and toothpastes? Will our booth be appealing enough to attract people? I had no clue.

Target population for the event, “Under One Umbrella” were those struggling financially. After this event, all my questions I had before were answered. Though this population had priorities to get life security it was my surprise that their oral health has been part of their top priorities as well.

I realized this further supports how dental hygienists are as primary care providers, and I hope that with the UBC Dental Hygiene program and other dental hygiene institutes and organizations will further spread awareness that dental hygienists are the next big thing!

Richmond General Hospital: Volunteering Opportunity

Common areas in which dental hygienists work after graduation include private practices and in public health organizations. (1) Community rotations in school had only been my exposure of working in a public health aspect. However, I had the privilege to be one of the chosen volunteers to come to the Richmond General Hospital with the collaboration of The Dental Mission Project. This was a good experience for me because I got to experience providing Dental Hygiene services in a hospital. Generally, the population was a wide range from children to adults. Clinical therapy included intra and extra oral examinations, quick perio and dental exams (spot probing), and debridement.

To my surprise, adapting to this sudden fast paced environment was not so much of a challenge because I enjoyed it so much. I learnt how to set up the foldable dental chairs and used other resources that could be helpful such as chairs in the room, the whiteboard and tables. I enjoyed communicating and collaborating with the staff from the Dental Mission Project, as well as expanding my network with the other dental hygiene and dental students.

A challenge I had faced was that there was a patient who could not speak nor understand English. Providing personal self care was difficult without a translator, and I realized that creativity comes into play. What I did to solve this issue was using the whiteboard and I drew out for the technique of C-shape flossing – and after demonstrating and showing the drawings on the whiteboard, the patient was able to successfully achieve the C-shape flossing technique on their teeth.

Overall, this experience working in the hospital had become one of my definite places of working as a dental hygienist in the future.

Prepping instruments and barriers before clients come into the room with other chosen volunteers, under supervision from The Dental Mission Project.

Where DH services are held.

Looking over the schedule for the day.

References:

Singer J, Cohen L, LaBelle A. Dental hygienists in nontraditional settings: practice and patient characteristics. J Public Health Dent 1986 [cited 2017 Mar 16]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3457952

Immigrant Services Society

One of the roles of being a dental hygienists includes being an advocate. According to the CDHA, the definition of dental hygienists as an advocate is:

“Speaking, writing or acting in favour of a particular cause, policy or group of people—often aims to reduce inequities in health status or access to health services.”

During the second year community rotation, I had the opportunity to go to the Immigrant Services Society where my group and I were able to identify barriers that new immigrants face when accessing dental care.

Upon observation, it was evident that many cannot access care due to limited English speaking skills, as well as general low oral health literacy. Therefore, as advocates we produced lesson plans to tackle these issues.

From graduating from an international high school, I thought it wouldn’t be as challenging to teach the students on dental terms and personal self care (toothbrushing and flossing techniques). However, I was wrong – it was definitely a challenge.

I was happy that my group creatively came up with ideas such as creating videos for the students to make them understand a lot better and quicker when teaching them a topic. I feel like using visual aids are always the gold standard on teaching strategy.

Filming videos for the students was fun, as well as making worksheets to overcome the inequities in their access of care. Out of all community sites I had been to, this was the site I probably enjoyed most!

Teaching to ISS students. Credits: Iris Feng

Pic from Sensitivity video

Reference:

National Dental Hygiene Competencies for Entry-to-Practice [Internet]. CDHA. 2008 [cited 24 Nov 2016]. Available from: http://www.cdha.ca/pdfs/profession/resources/nationalcompetencies_en.pdf

Broadway Pentecostal Lodge

I was placed at Broadway Pentecostal Lodge (BPL) in the first semester of fourth year. This was probably one of the biggest learning experiences I had encountered since I started dental hygiene because I barely had any experience providing dental hygiene services in an elderly nursing home.

Generally, the population consists of elders with a variety of characteristics, as opposed to the population at OHC in UBC, the population would have similar characteristics and demographics.

Clinical therapy includes assessments and treatment such as extra-oral and intra-oral exams, dental exams, deplaquing with a manual toothbrush, debridement with hand scaling, denture care, application of fluoride and personal self care either with the elder or with care aids on the floor.

Moreover, it was challenging for me to adapt when implementing dental hygiene services. Sometimes because of the variety of illnesses, medications and conditions would make it difficult for me to communicate with them, as well as just providing care. As a result, I felt that I grew more patient. In addition, it was hard to provide care bedside. It was such a challenge to follow ergonomics! I try my best to maintain a straight back while debriding but most of the time it cannot be achieved and by the end of the day I would end up having a sore back.

Overall, it was a challenge but a good challenge – I also learnt to communicate with other health professionals, especially during Care Conferences, improved on paper charting and definitely gained more knowledge and skills on doing dental hygiene services in this type of population.

Developmental Disabilities Association

The Developmental Disabilities Association (DDA) includes a group of special adults under the diabetic and weight loss program who are have unmet needs in terms of their oral health. For this population, they face many challenges such as dexterity and mobility issues, as well as having low oral health literacy and difficulty in access to dental care.

In my second year of community, my group was assigned to DDA. As dental hygienists, it is important to consider these challenges from the population and educate them by helping them resolving these issues in order to improve their oral health. Our main goal was to play the educator role: to educate them on nutrition on how some foods can cause cavity formation, provide exercising routines, demonstrate toothbrushing techniques and giving resources.

It was such a wonderful experience for me. Until now, I remembered how amazed I was when the individuals in our group expressed great curiosity by asking us so many questions about gingival health and nutrition. It was unexpected; after the implementation I had a different perspective and a more positive outlook on these types of populations.

Standing by DDA with my fellow classmates. Credits: Myself

Implementation at Broadway Pentecostal Lodge

Throughout the years of being a dental hygiene student, I had been exposed to different types of populations. Besides doing dental hygiene services in clinic, another role as a dental hygienist is to educate individuals depending on their oral health needs through health promotion. During my fourth year, I had the opportunity to educate nurses and care aids about the linkage between aspiration pneumonia and oral health in the geriatric population at Broadway Pentecostal Lodge.

We made a poster and brochure with information about what aspiration pneumonia was and how it links to oral health, and what the nurses and care aids can do to prevent this from happening to the elders in BPL.

Some of the nurses and care aids did not know that oral health is another causal factor that can lead to aspiration pneumonia, as one of the nurses were surprised how oral health can affect general health.

Me and my classmate with our poster & brochures! Credits: Emily Choi

Peer Mentor

Back when I recently completed my second year, I had encountered with an upperclassman who taught me more on instrumentation in summer clinic. Although I had learnt instrumentation in class, it was a different learning experience coming from the upperclassman: somehow, all the learning issues that I had instantly vanished. It was such an inspirational experience – I learnt the way she answers my questions and her teaching methods, which was mainly through demonstration. I wanted to have that leadership aspect of hers. It was then I hoped to become like her, to be a good mentor to the future underclassmen.

Upon fourth year, the program had added a new rotation where fourth years play a leadership role to second years and help mentor their learning. I was beyond thrilled. My first peer mentor rotation included a lot of communication, demonstration, critical thinking and collaboration with the second year students and their instructor. We were all passionate on learning how to do dental and periodontal exams. Not only I felt as though I improved my leadership skills at the end, I also made some new connections from the second years!

From this experience, peer mentoring has been shown that sometimes students also learn best by another dental hygiene student as they experienced the same thing as they did, compared to an instructor. It was more relatable, and students were more curious and asked a lot of questions much more than to their instructor.

Collaboration with Grad Perio Student

It was during third year I started to have clinical rotations with the graduate periodontal students, where I had the opportunity to observe and assist in a couple of surgeries with my assigned graduate periodontal student. Until then, I realized my lack of knowledge in the graduate periodontal department, and I yearned to learn more about them and how dental hygienists can collaborate with them.

During fourth year, I was assigned to present a treatment planning seminar on any kind of intervention, and luckily, a client of mine needed referral to the graduate periodontal student at that time. Therefore, I thought this was the perfect time to collaborate with a graduate periodontal student, and it turned out to be a huge learning experience.

My client was referred to receive implants. Together, the grad student and I with research use, scientific investigation and critical thinking compiled treatment plans for dental hygiene and graduate periodontal programs. From literature, I learnt useful information such as risks of peri-implant disease and how it can be controlled or prevented in dental hygiene, such as poor plaque control and history of periodontal disease. Significantly, we were able to achieve a shared goal.

I realized that my confidence in collaborating with other health professionals to ensure optimal care for my client has improved, as well as my communication skills. I began to think of other health professionals whom I can personally collaborate with as well, and I hope to have those opportunities in the near future.