Dental Mission to Belize, 2014

What an awesome team! We loved working with everyone!

This past November, East Berlin Smiles teamed up with International Health Outreach and traveled to Orange Walk Town, Belize for a dental mission.  Our entire staff at East Berlin Smiles went, including Dr. Cockley.  We had the privilege of learning new techniques for glass ionomer restorations and how to incorporate ozone therapy in our patient's treatment.  

Amber and Gina - the inseparable duo

This dental mission was unique in the fact that our goal was to treat each patient as comprehensively as possible. All patients received  ultrasonic scaling and several restorations (if needed) to get them back to dental health. Education was also a key part of our mission and we gave needed supplies like toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss. Our patients were then referred to their local dentist who partnered with us for their continued care.  We were able to treat 336 patients, 96 children, and saved over 5,000 teeth!

The people of Belize are amazing - So welcoming and friendly and appreciative of the treatment we provided. As of now, we plan to return in November of this year for another mission to a different district in Belize. If you ever get the chance to go on a dental mission - go! You won't regret it.  It's a great chance to  network with other amazing people in the dental field and to use your talents and skills to give back. 

Infection Control in the Dental Office

Infection Control in the dental office has been a recent hot topic. At East Berlin Smiles, we have always made it a standard to uphold the guidelines for infection control by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Before you enter the examining room, all surfaces, such as the dental chair, dental light, drawer handles and countertops have been cleaned and decontaminated. As often as possible, we will use disposable items that are discarded after each patient. Non-disposable items like the dental tools or handpieces are cleaned and sterilized between patients. 

We would like to show you a behind the scenes view of our sterilization room utilizing state of the art technology. We care about each of our patients’ health and safety! Stop by our office for a complementary office tour or on your next scheduled dental appointment simply ask for a tour of our updated sterilization room.

Click on the following link to follow us on Facebook and for more photos

  https://www.facebook.com/DentalAssistingDivas

East Berlin Smiles Kid's Day

Restore Access Openings - Cleanly and Quickly!

You asked for more handy chair-side tips so I'm giving you one of my favorites.  I was going to make my millions and somehow patent this technique, but I decided to be unselfish and share this with everyone. :)

This may seem very simple and silly but it streamlines the process and helps save time.  This picture shows red wax formed into the shape of a cone and placed securely onto the end of a PFI. The material is in the perfect shape to fill an access opening of an implant or as a temporary restoration for a root canal treated tooth, sedative filling, or palliative treatment. You can use any material that is appropriate for your situation such as a composite material like Systemp or a temporary filling material like Cavit. 

Support Our Future Dental Assistants

Over the last two years, our dental office has had the privilege of working with various dental assisting schools in our area. Most of the programs require their students to extern in our office for about six weeks. This has given us the opportunity to help them become "seasoned" dental assistants before they apply for their first dental assisting position. 

Most of the students come to our office very intimidated by the dentist and are unsure of their abilities as assistants. Most of them have only learned about procedures in a classroom setting and worked on fellow students or typodonts. Many of you probably remember how you felt as a new assistant and how scary that first day was! Most of us would have loved to have had a competent assistant work side by side with us to "work out the kinks" and nerves before finding a job. 

Accepting dental assisting students into your office is a great way to help these future assistants see how a "real" dental office functions, interact with staff members and patients, understand the importance of infection control/procedures/materials/charting/lab work etc., prepare them for job interviews and what they should look for in a potential office.

Dental Assisting Divas and Jackie

Here are some photos of our last extern-Jackie and the fun we had with her in our office. She had a great sense of humor and made it through our "hazing process". We loved her so much we hated to see her go and wish her the best in her career.

  

We Are Back!

Maxine Clare Pierce

It has been a crazy couple months since our last post. Amber had her first baby in January, our doctor had an serious, unexpected illness in March and Gina had surgery in July. Things have been very hectic around here and we have not had the time to blog. Everything is back to normal now and WE ARE BACK and ready to share more dental assisting tips and fun things going on in our office. So keep following us on Facebook for new posts! We also want to hear from you- so please give us your feedback we look forward to hearing from you!

Divas Take on Las Vegas

We just returned from a team building trip to Las Vegas. Here is a run down of our activities.......

Wednesday, November 9th-We touched down in Las Vegas and headed to our hotel, Planet Hollywood-right in the center of the strip.

Thursday, November 10th-"Movie Stars for the Day"

Off to New Patients Inc. to film video clips for our website. They rolled out the red carpet for us

with a spread of refreshments and a make-up artist to "glam us up" for the shoot. After many out takes and bloopers we finished filming with very professional results. NPI will do the editing and we will soon be able to view the finished product!

  

That evening we celebrated by going to dinner and the "O" Cirque du Soleil show at the beautiful Bellagio Hotel. The show was amazing and was one of the highlights of our trip.

November 11th & 12th-Madow Brother's TBSE("the best seminar ever")

Friday and Saturday we attended a fun, practice management, team building and inspirational seminar at Planet Hollywood. The Madow's encourage you to "dress up" in crazy attire, so we wore our Dental Diva shirts and pink boa's!

Saturday evening was our final night in Vegas so we walked the strip, toured some hotels and had dinner. Sunday morning we left for home all pumped up as a team and ready to implement all the good tips we received. It was so nice to get out of the office and re-energize ourselves so we could come home and give our best to our patients and one another. We are so thankful to have such a great doctor to work for who truly appreciates her team and includes us in these fun outings.