Things to Work on During your Christmas Break
Congratulations on finishing up this fall semester of dental hygiene school! Honestly, no one has ever gone through a semester like this, and hopefully no one else will have to! You may be already away from campus and finishing up your lecture classes online. But, what about clinic? At our school, we’ll be away from the clinic for almost 2 months! It feels like a long time to be away from your instruments and your patients. However, there are a few things you can do while at home being away from patients to keep up on your clinic skills. Here are a few ideas:
Of course, watch our Hygiene Edge videos on all the basics regularly. We have them all- patient operator positioning, specific hand instruments that you may use, wrist motion, modified pen grasp, etc. Watching and reviewing videos can help jog your memory on how to perform all the skills you were practicing so hard to feel comfortable with.
Keep your hands and fingers healthy and strong. Being away from work on patients for so long means the muscles in your hands will go away. Keep up their strength by working them out! Yes, that sounds so weird to work out your hand muscles, but you totally can by playing with play dough and clay, grabbing stress balls, and pinching different objects. Your hands will thank you come January and you’re back seeing patients.
Grab your typodont and practice your adaption. However, before you do, make sure your typodont is sent up like a human would be. Instead of holding the typodont in front of your face with your non dominant hand, lay it down like you would a patient. Some typodonts have a hole in the back for you to put a dowel or a holder through and attach it to a table or your couch arm. Then, when you practice, make sure you’re in the correct clock position before jumping in. Even though your set up looks completely different than it would in a dental chair, you’ll still want to follow all the basics of where you sit, where your patients head it, where you non dominant hand goes, and where your dominant hand goes so you’re practicing and remembering all the correct techniques.
Keep working on your indirect vision. You can totally practice with your mouth mirror and instrument on your typodont, which would be very helpful. You can also practice by coloring a picture by only looking in a mirror, or doing mazes in a mirror. Doing any small, fine motor task while looking in your bathroom mirror will help train your brain to do a task you’re normally used to doing backwards, which is exactly what happens when you use a dental mirror intraorally. You can download our free coloring page from our shop, or go all out by downloading some Christmas pages and go for it!
Keep looking for patients! We know that finding patients is the trickiest part of dental hygiene school. Even though you may be having a low key break and not interacting with as many people as normally, still be keeping your eyes and ears open for potential patients. Having a Zoom family Christmas party? Bring it up that you’ll be looking for patients starting in a few weeks. Have some spare time online? Set up a few Facebook ads looking for patients or post on your neighborhood or city groups about discounted appointments come January. Right now it the perfect time to start filling your schedule for January.
Keep up the great work throughout your break! Definitely enjoy yourself, stay safe and healthy, and keep practicing your clinic skills at home to be ahead of the game come next semester. What are you doing during this break to keep yourself healthy and ready for the next semester?
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