Started teaching

 This week I had my first experience in a teaching capacity. Earlier in the week I was one of the supervisors in the bachelor of oral health simulation clinics and also as a surprise I was rostered with the dental students in the extraction clinic today. I still have a fair bit to learn about dentistry but it was good to impart some knowledge onto the students. Unfortunately with the lockdown not many of the students were present in the simulation clinics and all the students had experienced significant disruption to their learning schedule and were lacking in variety of experience.

In some way it is the duty of a teacher to try and impart their knowledge and experience onto the students but the students have to reciprocate with an open ear and an open mind. I found that some students were willing to listen and learn and they gained quite a bit from our time together but others were content in powering on their own. It is a testament to the wide variety of personalities that we come in contact with and to an extent, each of these people will learn and make mistakes at different rates. 

Some important messages I tried to get across to them had nothing to do with dentistry. One was how important it is to look internally and see your faults, inexperience and fears and accept them as they are. If you accept them then you can deal with them. I noticed that some of them seemed quite flustered as they hadn't performed any procedures in a while and I explained that they need to understand this feeling, take a deep breath and calm themselves down because failing to do so will lead to shaky hands, mistakes being made and exhaustion by the end of the day. 

Hopefully I get some more time in the clinics because this is where I think I can do my best work but this is up to the rostering of the hospital. Hopefully I can also refine my technique and learn new ways to explain things and learn a thing or two about dentistry on the way.