Thursday, August 4, 2005

I got to the lab an hour early to work on a couple of preps. When I took a look at the ones I had done the night before, I noticed a few glaring mistakes. I keep turning my wrist as I move more mesially on tooth which produces an undercut on the mesial wall. So, I cut a new prep and tried hard not to undercut. It worked.

We had a lecture on how to prep #13, a premolar. Premolar are small teeth and have a very small occlusal cutting surface. I cut 8 preps yesterday. On 5 of those preps, I made the same mistake. I kept cutting the mesial supplemental groove too wide. The problem is that I can't find a good location to hold my mirror so that I can see the occlusal surface of the tooth and not splatter the mirror with lots of water. However, as I was finishing up yesterday, I think I stumbled into a good mirror location. If I hold the mirror slightly out of the mouth, I can get a decent look at the tooth.

Dr. Salimi, my row instructor, passed me off on #19 and #3. That means I can focus on #13 and #30 for next week. We have our first practical next Thursday. During a practical, they give us one tooth (#30 for this practical) and we have 90 minutes to cut the best prep we can. We can't have any notes or assistance. For this practical, we are allowed to take the typodont jaw out of the dummy's mouth to inspect the prep, but on later practicals we won't be able to remove the jaw. The grading on the preps is pretty tough. The course director went over the grading procedures and told us that around 50% of the class traditionally scores a D or an F on the first practical. So, I'll be happy with any grade better than a D. A D is clinically unacceptable, but a C is clinically acceptable (but ugly).

I was too tired to stay after school. We have a very tough week next week. I'll be studying all weekend.