California was nice. The weather was beautiful, I thoroughly enjoyed the beach (even if I wasn't diving), and the wedding went well.
However, it was hard to leave for 4 whole school days. Yes, we are given 8 allotted days off and 2 extra for boards...But, when you leave you do not get points. We need to have 3800 at the end to pass. Each procedure has a relative point value. Things like cleanings are 6/hour. Crowns are 40. Dentures 80. At a minimum, I like to get 15per clinic session (morning or afternoon). When you break down the total I think you need 30+/day to pass. So, leaving for 8 appointments was a little hard for me to be too excited about.
To top it off, my "make-up" the past few days has not been too successful with a failed patient on Monday morning, a morning with 9 points on Tuesday, etc. Luckily, today I started in "DAU" the "Dental Assistant Utilization" clinic. With the help of an amazing professional assistant I was able to do 8 fillings in one clinic session. 20 surfaces, 8 fillings, and 5 teeth. 68 points in one session. What a relief.
We are also graded on productivity. They extrapolate all of our expenses and our gross revenue for a year to let us know how we would do in private practice. I hope the $1650 worth of work I did this afternoon helped. I know I am a long way off from private practice, but I felt good about my effort today. And, my back felt good, too!
2 comments:
I don't know how it works.. do you not get to work with an assitant much?? In which case that sucks.. I mean, like you noticed, a qualified assistant can make all the difference!! I hope that you continue to do well with the points thing.. keep us informed..
We rarely get an assistant. Only if the assisting students are around (only in Sept on certain days) or if we are in DAU. Bummer, almost done with that.
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