Congratulations girls we did it, the end is finally here and we survived! 
The past two years of my life have been focused on the learning of dental hygiene as a skill and as a profession, I have learned so many things, but of all of them the valuable lessons about client care and individualized care plans was learned in this unique populations class in my final semester of school.
The first thing we got to do in this course was to create a fun interactive presentation for the local grade eight students. We worked as a group and developed teamwork skills as well as very valuable leadership skills. When the day came for the actual presentation it was fun watching the student try their hand at new skills and even better when you got to watch the light turn on for a couple of them. The assignment was a great introduction to what this course would entail.
The next assignment was to go to the Innisdale high school and meet with a student who had learning or physical disabilities and deliver oral hygiene to that student. In preparation for this we had a class activity where we bound our limbs, covered our eyes, and plugged our ears to get a taste of what these people might live with on a daily basis. It was an enormously eye opening experience that no amount of notes could have captured. It was hands on and real. When we went to the high school I was incredibly nervous, but after meeting with my paired student and talking with her it was easy. This experience was valuable in that even though we might not see an individual with special needs on a daily basis in private practice it is certianly a demographic that we will see and treat and this experience was great at helping us prepare for those times.
The next adventure that the class did was the trip to the jail, and while most of us felt apprehensive about this at the beginning I think in the end it was a valuable experience. I was really shocked how well the prisoners in a medium security prison lived. I was even more shocked at the benefits they received surrounding health care. The government clearly thinks that preventative dental care is important enough to offer 3 units of free cleaning to the inmates, yet the only free dental coverage offered to regular community member is through CINOT (children in need of treatment) this does not include preventative treatment. Where is the justice in that? It was a good experience seeing what the clinic looked like and knowing that that type of government job exists.
Finally through the presentations of other professionals in the field I learned about so many other options I could persue. The woman who spoke to the class about her journey to Peru was amazing and so many times while she was speaking I was only hoping for the opportunity to one day partake in something as incredible. Evelyn Waters was also a welcome visitor, as she helped to explain the different courses of action that could be taken when a complaint comes in, or a refersher on the way the CDHO opporates. The presenations of my classmates throughout the course were also very benneficial as I learned alot about different diseases and disabilities that I never knew before, and while most of the information was introductory, it was a great start to understanding some of those conditions.
My time in this class has been incredible, I feel that this course has given me more in one shot then many of the rest of them put together. Most of our other courses gave us theory and the knowledge to do different things within dental hygiene clinically, but this course actually opened the door and let us go ahead and do them ourselves within the community. For the first time I felt like a person capable of entering the workforce and providing adequate dental hygiene services from a completely different perspective then in the past. I know that I am now more prepared to make referals, call for consultations and finally report to the correct authorities when needed.
