May 2014 cant get here fast enough, Im looking forward to graduation and stepping into a dental practice as a valued team member. As an entry-level dental hygienist I am 100% positive that I will take my instrumentation and patient communication skills and knowledge of periodontal disease and what it takes to maintain a healthy oral environment into a private practice. In the Preceptor Handbook they talked a lot about ‘Coaching”. I feel that at OSU all the instructors do a great job coaching the students. Through their one on one coaching they are preparing each student with different learning styles to be confident to self assess patients in private practice. There where eight characteristics of Coaching listed in our reading and after reading all of them, I was happy to be able to think back and know that I have experienced an instructor at some point using all of these methods throughout my Hygiene education. They have forged partnerships, committed to produce a result, accepted each other nonjudgementally, encouraged students to improve, acknowledged uniqueness, prepared for coaching encounters, gave and received feedback and went above and beyond what was expected. I can truly say that our instructors at OSU are Great Role Models. I have learned so much in the classroom and in clinic, but little do they know that their behaviors and interactions with the patients is a lesson in itself.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” -Albert Einstein. I believe that there is truth to this quote, there is so much throughout our lives that we have learned and don’t think about once we have it mastered. I believe that learning is like building blocks and we are constantly adding new information to our existing knowledge. Last semester we talked about Blooms Taxonomy, where we had learned that there are many stages of knowledge and cognitive processes when it comes to completely and confidently understanding a subject. In the dental field and in life in general we are constantly evolving and new information, techniques and procedures will forever be changing. Thus education will never halt. Is it important to teach facts? Yes, these facts are the stepping stones of our education and give us direction when it comes to providing personalized care for our patients. Although I have learned so much throughout the Dental Hygiene program at OSU, I know I have so much more to learn, that only time will provide.
![Pinky and the Brain podering Critical Thinking](https://u.osu.edu/cain.198/files/2014/02/Pinky-and-the-Brain-podering-Critical-Thinking-17v6njt-300x273.jpg)
Critical thinking and problem solving is defiantly important to teach in Dental Hygiene. When in clinic there are five students per one instructor, so when we are in clinic we don’t have a coach/instructor helping us every step of the way when treating our patient. It is a valuable skill to be able to think fast to answer questions and make decisions regarding our patients oral health. I have always thought that critical thinking and problem solving went hand in hand, so I was happy to see that psychologists seen them as being intertwined. The article states “Critical thinking is the reflective process in which individuals assess a situation or evaluate data by using mental capacities characterized by adjectives such as compare, analyze, distinguish, reflect and judge.” The article describes problem solving as “The implementation component of the overall critical thinking process.” After reading this article, I think that its important to teach and focus on demonstrating critical thinking, because once you have learned and have a good understanding of a subject, one will be able to problem solve on their own. I feel that it is important to master both skill, for the fact that we don’t have cookie cutter patients, no one is the same. What may be a great solution to a problem for one patient may not work for someone else with the same problem. We must be able to think outside the box and this is where critical thinking and problem solving becomes important.
![april15](https://u.osu.edu/cain.198/files/2014/02/april15-r4e4p0.jpg)