Hygienist Reflection

I the practice I work for, there are two locations and each has one hygienist. I work at the Clearwater office and the other hygienist at the Tarpon office. To ensure inter-observer reliability in dental hygiene diagnosis, both office has the same types of instruments. I have to say, before I started working there, the office had old and not uniform instruments. It took me about five months to build up the armamentarium in my office. Now, each instrument kit has Metal UNC12 metal probes that I use for periodontal probing. Tarpon office started using the same type of instruments as well. Sometimes we have patients migrating between the two offices and it is important to ensure that probing is performed using the same technique (6 reading around
the circumference of each tooth recoding probing dept, and recessions) with the same type of instruments. For screening at each visits, PSR probes used by the dentists and the hygienists as well. Now, to be on the same page with the office staff, I had to start use the 1,2,3,4,* recording system instead the -for healthy gingiva, G-bleeding on probing, and P – for periodontal disease. Needles to say, when I tried to explain to the dentist the way SPC instructors had us recording PSR reading, she thought I making it up. She wanted to see an article that describes the PSR recording that I am talking about. Have not find any other than our program manual. That made me feel very uncomfortable...

For intra-observer reliability, I use the same type of probe UNC12 metal probe on every patient every time I perform periodontal assessment and record the reading the same way. Appying the same Probing technique each time important is important to ensure intra-observer reliability. The technique used is “walking the probe around the circumference of each toot recording the 6 deepest readings, by positioning the probe parallel to the long axes of the tooth.