Oral Examinations, Applying to Uni, and More...
Hey everyone,
I hope you guys have had a great week. This last week at dental school has been pretty relaxed compared to the first 2, with fewer lectures and a few cancelled sessions since it was King's freshers week! I did manage to go on campus though and get some PERIO clinical skills done.
🦷 Dental Diary
On the clinics this week we learned to carry out extra and intraoral examinations, which are really the bread and butter of what we're going to hopefully be doing this year once we see patients. These were quite easy to do on the phantom heads since there obviously wasn't anything wrong that we had to diagnose, but it did give us a good feel of what we'd be expected to do on real patients.
One of the things that the tutors emphasised was having our own system for examining patients; it didn't matter in what order we did the examination, as long as we covered everything by the end and didn't leave anything out.
We also went through a series of cases with patients and tried to identify what was wrong perio-wise, and this was quite easy in some cases, but it was sometimes harder to identify what was "normal" patient presentation. Sometimes, if a patient's gums were slightly less pale than they should be, it may not mean they had gingivitis, and this could be their normal colour.
I realise now that it's important to look for other signs if I'm unsure, and also with experience, I'll have a much easier time detecting gingivitis.
🧠 Insight of the Week
This week I came across a speech by Dwayne Johnson, which was actually really inspiring, and my favourite point from his speech is going to be my insight of this week. He was talking about the "no one will outwork me" mentality, saying how he wakes up early every morning and that allows him to simply do more work than everyone else. This is something I really resonated with because I'm something of a morning person myself, and I love getting all my work done and out of the way, so I can do more with my day. I've also heard other athletes talk about this idea, like Kobe Bryant, when trying to get ahead and achieve more. I'm going to try waking up early next week starting tomorrow to get my work done, and I'll update you on how that goes. For now, though, I cannot recommend this speech enough to all of you guys, so give it a watch (he does swear quite a bit, just warning you):
✍️ Applicant Tip of the Week
I've recently had a chat with some students about which universities to apply to, depending on their grades and on their UCAT score, etc. Most of the time, if a student asks me whether they should take a risk with a uni that has higher requirements or UCAT cut-offs, I tell them to go for it, as long as they have 2 other choices that they are very confident with. If you really want to go to a certain university, and it's your dream choice and all that, then as long as you meet the basic grade requirement and you know they won't cut you off because of your UCAT score, then do take the risk in my opinion, as long as you have the safer options to fall back on just in case. As a side note, if anyone of you guys isn't feeling very confident with your UCAT scores, don't forget that you can sit the BMAT and apply to the University of Leeds, essentially giving you a second chance to do well on an entrance exam, which is supposedly easier than the UCAT.
I never sat the BMAT myself, but the team I am a part of, I Want To Be A Dentist, does have a BMAT course, and offers 1-to-1 BMAT tuition if you guys are interested, here's the link for that:
https://iwanttobeadentist.com/one-to-one-ucat-bmat-tuition
Anyways that's basically it for this week, I've got a busy week coming up with a full day on campus which I'll share with you guys over on Instagram, and tutorials and lectures going back to normal now. Hope you have a great next week!
Omar Tabaqchali :)