Patient Numero Uno

It is a new semester, and I feel totally unprepared.  I feel like having the last month off has turned my brain to mush!!!  I can't believe how many things I forgot over the break.  I hope that I get back into the swing of things quickly, or I will be SUNK!

I had my first patient experience last Wednesday.  I hadn't met her until that day.  It was a little rough.  I thought I was being super efficient by get the name and mg of all of her prescriptions the night before.  I looked them all up and had it typed out, line by line, of how it should look in the chart.  I get the chart to my instructor and I had forgotten to write down where I got the information from.  First thing forgotten.  Next, I took a couple of x-rays.  I love our new system for keeping track of things.  We don't have to fill out a paper any more to get our x-rays taken.  The front desk people just take our word for it.  I got her x-rays taken and all is well.  I moved on to probing and recording all of the work she had previously had done.  My instructor comes over to do the OD (oral diagnosis) check, and I had measured many 4-5 mm pockets and she was getting a lot of 6 mm pocket depths.  (Must work on getting accurate probe readings!)  We don't have much time for scaling at this point, so I  start on oral hygiene instruction with my patient.  I dye her mouth and record her PFI and BFI scores.  But guess what?  I forgot to record them on the green and blue sheets.  I only wrote it in the chart.  After I excuse my patient and start to fill out the chart, I realize that I forgot to get a signature from my instructor that the x-rays were ok to release to my patient and have my patient sign saying that I gave her the x-rays.  What a day of forgetting!

I learned a lot from that day.  I came home a made a list of all of the things that were very easy for me to forget.  I need to type it up and laminate it so that I can prevent these mistakes in the future.

My goal for my next patient is to simply try not to forget anything.  I will write about that next.