MOCK BOARD!!

Yesterday we had our mock boards, I was stressed, my patient was late......But she did show up which I was grateful for. I think I was stressed mostly because I think about it like a board and what we are going to have to do and if I am going to be able to do all the paperwork right, on and on. I am kind of shocked that I don't remember anything from last mock board! I think it's so great that we have a few because the first one was pretty much a blur.

Mine didn't go as well as I had hoped. On a positive note though, it was a great learning experience and every time I learn something it's one thing that I know I won't do wrong on game day :) I had calculus clicks and that is something I will just have to work on, I used my pt's x-ray's from the dentist. They sucked! In fact, Perry made me laugh. I went to hand him my x-rays for a 2nd time at pt check out and he looked at me and said those were so crappy the first time I don't want to look at them again! I can only laugh because I didn't take them. I'm sure I would have crawled into a hole had they been mine. The point about the x-rays is - take your own. Do everything you can that you can make sure are "board ready". X-rays are one of those things. I took it for granted because they were coming from a former Weber student and she was sending the pt for boards they would be good x-rays. Good learning lesson!

Kami taught me a few great lesson on maxillary anteriors the day before at the VA, that if I hadn't have learned I would have missed 2 more spots. "Stack" your middle, ring, and pinky finger -make them work as one unit. Get up on your fulcrum (so your hand is more parallel to the teeth) and use the very tip of (H5/6) to go around the mesial edge (subging) turn your instrument in towards the tooth as your coming down (torque). This may not make any sense until you actually see it done. I popped off 2 big chunks of calc this way :)

My lesson from Perry is on paperwork - make sure on mock board day your candidate sticker is on the pt's right side once you put their bib on. So sticker closest to you when they are laying down in the chair. On the perio statement - throw everything we learn in clinic out the window. Boards are different. If there is no recession anywhere, use the x-ray column as your guide to perio condition of pt. If there is recession add the largest recession/pocket combo and use that number in the column of CAL to determine severity (ignore all other columns). Luckily I didn't miss it but it did help make sense of that area. He also mentioned that 99% of board pt's are moderate, so when in doubt,..choose moderate!

Recession - if there is no recession and you mark a 1 it will be an error, however if there is recession and you mark 0, as long as your w/in 1 mm, it won't be counted against you!!

Hopefully next mock will be better!!