Blog 22: Mentorship

Literal

A log of my mentorship hours is located here.

My mentor's name is Dr. Banh and can be reached through his clinic/office at (626) 339-5111.

Interpretive

The most important thing I gained from my mentorship experience is an idea of what it is like to work in an orthodontics office. This is important because it helped me realize that I would like to work as an orthodontist in the future, but am still exploring my options.

Applied

Mentorship has helped me answer my EQ because I was able to see techniques applied on real people, rather than simply reading about it or looking at models. In order to learn about what is important to a patient's treatment, I needed to see treatment in action.

Blog 12: Mentorship Hours

1. Where are you doing your mentorship?

I am doing my mentorship at the office of Dr. Dan Banh DDS.

2. Who is your contact?

My contact is Irene (whose last name I always forget). She is the office manager and works the front desk. She can be contacted at the office phone number: (626) 339-5111.

3. How many total hours have you done?

As shown on my Senior Project Hours Log, I have completed 43 hours over the summer (with a different mentor for a different topic), 25 hours of mentorship, and 28 hours for my Independent component. The sum of those hours is 96 hours, but with my current mentor I completed 53 hours.

4. Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.

The hours I completed since the school year began have consisted of filing, shadowing, and seeing what goes on away from the patient's chair. There were many opportunities to see all sorts of orthodontic appliances, as well as the process of attaching, wearing, and removing braces. My time at my mentorship has taught me that there is much more to orthodontics than what I had originally thought and I have so much more to learn.

2014 in Perspective: A Review of Findings

About four months. That's how long I have been researching for my senior project topic. The question I have been trying to answer is, What is the most important factor an orthodontist must consider when treating a patient?

Perhaps my research was merely focused on just one answer, but I find that appliances play a large role in orthodontic treatment. Appliances used by practicing orthodontists include braces, headgear, palatal expanders, and retainers. As I have mentioned in previous posts, such appliances will correct bites and tooth alignment, or do all sorts of other miraculous things to get treatment done. (Proper planning and judgement is necessary to get the right appliance into a patient's mouth, of course, so it isn't as if the orthodontist is being forgotten.)

Basically, orthodontic appliances ARE the treatment and it would be very hard to get much of anything done without them. Combined with an orthodontist's experience and knowledge, appliances are powerful.

I hope that the new year brings forth many other revelations that will help me with my senior project. Happy 2015.

Wait a minute, I had braces, too!

That's right, ladies and gents. From 2009 to 2011, I was shackled by those pokey little metal brackets and wires. No soda, no chewy or sticky foods, nothing too hard or crunchy... It was difficult being a sugar fiend with braces. Especially when my wires were tightened. No eating took place for days after visits like those.

02.25.2009

Somehow, my experience with braces was not completely terrible. Dr. Banh and his employees (past and current) made the experience much more pleasant. They are friendly, joke with patients, and treat people like family coming in for a friendly visit. There is a warmth that keeps patients like myself coming back. As important and fascinating as the atmosphere is, I must digress.

It's obvious, but people with braces have their own individual reasons for visiting an orthodontist. Some of those reasons are even difficult to see with the naked, untrained eye. In my interview with Dr. Banh, he told me that there are many steps to diagnosing a patient and developing treatment plans. At some point during that process, x-rays are taken to show what is going on in places we can't see. Here is an example of an x-ray from my file.

It's tough to tell, but my maxillary cuspids (canine teeth, top row) in the x-ray are in the roof of my mouth. In order to get those teeth down to their designated positions, I had to have oral surgery to make openings in the roof of my mouth, attach chains to the teeth to pull them, and wear braces in order to keep my teeth straight throughout the process. If I had not gone to the orthodontist to have an exam, my cuspids would have erupted in place of my incisors (front teeth). Orthodontics helps prevent dental abnormalities such as my "vampire teeth."

Getting the Ball Rolling

So far, I have been lucky enough to be able to volunteer at an orthodontist's office where the people are lovely and I am learning things here and there. It is important to note that I am off to a slow start, since I was not working there during the summer and my previous schedule hadn't allowed me to work more than a few hours at the office.


My time spent at Dr. Banh's clinic has been filled with general helping out with menial tasks. My first day was spent filing away patient data (and conducting my first interview), while my second day consisted of organizing papers into packets.

The multitude of patient files in need of being filed away.

After I finished my interview on the first day, one of the assistants, Roberta, showed me a few different appliances that are used by Dr. Banh.

The first appliance (pictured top left) is a skull with TADs, or temporary anchorage devices, screwed into the bone of the mouth in order to move teeth into a desirable position. The second appliance (top right) are different types of palatal expanders. Their purpose is to widen the upper jaw to create a better fit with the lower jaw. The third appliance (bottom left) are braces with clear brackets, which are more aesthetically pleasing than traditional metal brackets. The fourth and final picture (bottom right) is of retainers, which are normally given to patients after their braces are removed in order to prevent shifting of the teeth. At Dr. Banh's clinic, patients are able to design their retainers however they like, and the retainer for the palate has a very cute watermelon design as an example. I thought it was pretty cool to see what types of devices orthodontists use and what purpose those tiny appliances serve.

The packets I put together on the second day are one of the ways the clinic gets the word out about orthodontic healthcare and their business. The letter portion of the packet was written to the parents of elementary school students, informing them about National Orthodontic Health month and the care Banh Smiles offers. The other paper attached was a coloring page for a contest. The winning class of the contest will win a pizza party sponsored by Dr. Banh. I think the idea is lovely and is an excellent method for promotion and raising awareness. Unfortunately, the packets took all three hours of my time that day and I got cramps from moving papers back and forth. I'm thankful I didn't have to staple them, too.

The informational letters and coloring pages that I was supposed to form into packets.

Summer Mentorship Component

Literal  

1. A log my mentorship hours:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqjYoq8XhtlcdFJCSDBfelZVS1d2OGRlTWFTWVZ1V2c&usp=drive_web#gid=0

2. Volunteer contact information:

Ernest Romero 

Teen Services Librarian at the West Covina Library

(626) 962-3541 

emromero@library.lacounty.gov

3. What questions were raised because of your 10 hours of experience? 

• Can I create an EQ from the work I do at this place/my topic?
• Is this what I want to use for my senior project topic?
• How can I apply what I do and learn here to my senior project throughout the year?
• Can I make an hour-long presentation out of this at the end of the school year?

Interpretive

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

The most important thing I have gained from this experience is the knowledge of how to deal with people. By people, I mean people of all ages. The ability to deal with people is priceless because it is something I will be doing indefinitely, and thinking on my toes as I do when helping others at the library is a universal skill. Another part of dealing with other people is explaining how to do something, which I feel I am proficient at thanks to my experience volunteering at the library.

Applied

5. What is your senior project topic going to be?  How did what you did help you choose a topic?  Please explain.

My senior topic will be Library Teen and Youth Services. My volunteering over the summer has helped me choose this topic because I had a surprising amount of fun volunteering at the library, have met excellent people, and feel that the employees at the library are doing a great service by reaching out to the youth of the community. I felt inspired and as if I could do a lot with the library for my senior project.