Dental/dental hygiene trainees discuss quality of patient care, dental training/education, and social determinants of health. (2023)
I’m going to disagree with the OSPE [objective structured practical examination] thing, personally, because I think we were basically given scripts, and you think you were lucky if you were able to take from that, and make it your own. But a lot of times we’re penalized if we don’t say exactly what’s on there. It to me, feels robotic, I didn’t feel like the OSPE prepared me to handle these situations, because it made me see things in a patient’s medical history with a huge red flag, in my eyes. And they’re not humanized to me, so I don’t like that specifically. But I think there was a panel in ethics, where there was the one ethics class that I feel it stuck with me, Dr. [. . .] brought in a few HIV patients to talk to us about their experience, and it made it real. Where people were surviving, like, “We have this.” A lot of times the majority of people we see are patients of some sort. We’re all… Have something happening in our lives, none of us are in perfect health. I mean we may be, but it’s pretty rare. I think my experiences in clinic, just being in that situation and reading the situation, and seeing… I feel helped me be better, just being in there.