COURSE DESCRIPTION

Introduces advanced skills and the dental hygienist's role in dental specialties. Includes supervised clinical practice in the dental hygiene clinic and/or off-campus clinical rotations at various community facilities. Emphasizes treatment of patients demonstrating periodontal involvement, stressing application and correlation of knowledge and skills from previous semesters. Lecture 1 hour. Clinic 12 hours. Total 13 hours per week.

GENERAL COURSE PURPOSE

To prepare the dental hygiene student for more advanced and specialized treatment skills required for dental hygiene practice.

ENTRY LEVEL COMPETENCIES

Successful completion of three semesters of the dental hygiene program including DNH 143 - "Dental Hygiene III".

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of the course and as a result of class participation, clinical procedures and reading assignments, the student will be able to perform the following procedures with minimal level of 75% competency.

1. Describe the treatment plan for a typical periodontal patient including services to be performed, number and order of appointments needed for completion of requirement
2. Write a complete treatment plan for a periodontal patient after the first appointment and submit it to their clinic instructor for approval
3. Collect data and record information for a periodontal charting and workshops for a special periodontal patient which is to be supervised and graded by an assigned instructor
4. Perform a periodontal workup on a special periodontal patient
5. Understand the importances of home care for successful periodontal treatment and achieve an acceptable level of plaque control for the periodontal treatment and prior to root planing
6. Understand the rationale for use of auxiliary plaque control devices and introduce appropriate devices to their periodontal patient as needed
7. Perform scaling and root planing on a periodontal patient to the satisfaction of the assigned clinical instructor
8. Reevaluation of periodontal treatment is to be performed to assess the level of success upon completion of treatment
9. Understand the components of nutritional counseling and conduct nutritional counseling for an appropriate clinical patient under the supervision of one clinical instructor
10. Complete one patient with "Special Needs" related to medical problems, disease, a handicap or disability or a patient with special dental problems, such as pregnancy gingivitis, oral cancer, or cleft lip and/or palate
11. Choose one subject related to clinical dental hygiene and do library work for a "review of literature." A list of references in APA style using the periodic index to dental literature, as a source of reference is to be compiled preliminary to writing a research paper or doing a table clinic or research project for spring term
12. Select a minimum of ten journal articles from the above "review of literature" on the topic chosen and write abstracts for each article
13. Interpret radiographs with special emphasis on pathology including periodontal manifestations and identification of landmarks, dental caries, periodontal involvement, cysts and tumors and developmental irregularities as well as normal landmarks. Use radiographs for their periodontal patient to identify periodontal problems and facilitate instrument selection for scaling and root planing