Hygiene Hotspot

HYGIENE HOTSPOT A VISIT TO THE OUCOD DURING A PANDEMIC

By: Donna F. Wood, RDH, MS, MEd and Kim Graziano, RDH, MPH Good morning and welcome to the OU allowed us to be one of the very first dental College of Dentistry! What is your name schools in the United States to reopen. The please and what time is your appointment? RTF continues to meet weekly to review Thank you, I see your name on our schedule and adjust current policies regarding the and you are being treated today in the changes that occur nationally from the Shillingburg Clinic located on the third floor. CDC, as well as those changes that occur Please enter through the revolving door and on the OU campus. they will take your temperature and ask you some questions inside. This is the dialogue that occurs daily with every patient that enters the dental school. One hundred seventy-five faculty, staff and students volunteer weekly as screeners to help with this process to manage the entry of four hundred patients each day. While many of our courses are occurring online, all of our classrooms have been adjusted to meet social distancing requirements. Because we’ve been able to modify classrooms to accommodate the dental hygiene classes at all of our educational sites, the majority of our classroom teaching is occurring in person. Everyone is aware of the changes and challenges that COVID-19 has brought to the dental profession. The educational realm of the profession is no different. Dean Raymond Cohlmia and all of the OUCOD faculty have been working tirelessly since the pandemic was first declared to ensure that both the dental and dental hygiene students were and are able to receive a full education, both didactically and clinically, despite the necessary limitations caused by the virus. As many of you are aware, personal protective equipment (PPE) has been one of our greatest challenges during the pandemic. Every week it will be something new that is difficult to obtain. In the beginning it was N95 respirators; today, it is gowns. We anxiously await what new obstacle tomorrow may bring. Prior to COVID-19, hands-on learning occurred three times a week with our first-year DH students working on student partners. Now that we are limited by social distancing and PPE, we’ve resorted to working on manikins two days per week and then student partners one day per week. The manikin clinics are working well as more students are allowed in the lab at one time. There have been relatively few modifications to the second-year DH students’ clinical education. The students have not been able to attend outside clinical rotations at our partnering clinics but we are hoping to add those to the schedule for the Spring 2021 semester. They are also not utilizing any aerosolizing procedures in their treatment of patients. Dean Cohlmia developed the Reengagement Task Force (RTF) to create policies and procedures that safeguard the dental school community. This committee created a return-to-service plan that Through it all, we have remained very optimistic and positive that we are maintaining the “OU standard of education” for our dental hygiene students, while keeping all our faculty, staff, students and patients safe.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Donna Wood, RDH, MS, MEd is the Dental Hygiene Program Director at the OU College of Dentistry. She is an Associate Professor and a Course Director for both didactic and clinical courses in the Dental Hygiene Program. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Oklahoma where she is studying Adult and Higher Education. Wood served as 2017-18 President of the Oklahoma Dental Hygienists’ Association, and has served as the Dental Hygiene Lead for the Oklahoma Mission of Mercy since its inception in 2010.

Kim Graziano, RDH, MPH is the Director of Compliance at the OU College of Dentistry. She is an Associate Professor and a Course Director in the Pre-Doctoral Program and provides clinical teaching in the Dental Hygiene Program. Graziano has provided multiple CE courses on Infection Control and has served as the Infection Control Lead for the Oklahoma Mission of Mercy since 2011.