Saturday, August 7, 2010

My very first denture

No, its not for me its for my patient.

In 3rd year dentistry we each get assigned with a patient who needs upper and lower set of dentures. We have had practices on making dentures however this was the first time making one for a real patient.

And believe it or not, it took us 6 months to make a denture.

I'm not saying students were so incompetent that it took us half a year to make a denture for ONE patient. As students the most frustrating thing is not inexperience or lack of knowledge, it is tutor checking.
Yes, EVERYTHING SINGLE FREAK'IN step must be signed and checked by a tutor before we proceed to the next step. This is to ensure that we don't screw up or do something completely wrong to our patients - which is fair enough - but it just makes the process bloody slow.














Photos of upper and lower denture for my patient


Complaints aside, I'm glad that I persevered and finally met the day where I can proudly issue a complete denture to my patient. I took shots of the completed denture before I gave it away to my patient to commemorate my acheivement. I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Dentistry is 'art', it requires extreme detail and patience to contruct a beautiful set of teeth to satisfy my patients.

The moment I saw my patient smile with the dentures I made for him, that just made my day.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Introduction

Welcome to my blog.

I will be talking about my life as a dental student in this blog.

This blog will contain lots of random thoughts, events in dental school and ramblings about my daily life. I will not be posting stuff in chronological order because I will be writing stuff as I remember it.

A life as a dental student is certainly stressful and sometimes damn frustrating but it has its charms. What keeps me going is the satisfaction of witnessing my 'art' in dentistry plus I get my various snippets of joy from treating my patients which makes it all worthwhile.

I hope you will come to understand what I mean.


-Caffeinated Dentist-