Self Assessment
Previous key learning experiences
One of the most important learning experiences of my life has been working with children during summers mostly throughout my pre-teen to teenage years. This was important to me as many kids my age didn’t volunteer or have a job throughout summer which made me extremely proud of myself. I gained many skills that has helped me further on in life such as interacting with children and building teamwork skills with working with others to design camps for children. I had learned skills to interact with different types of learners, to problem solve on my own and in a team. This experience I think has shaped many things in my life today and has allowed me to build on skills at a young age. It helped me interact with children and co-workers in a job. It has allowed me to take leadership in many parts of my life, in school and in sports and my job. It has helped me easily interact with children in Dental Assisting Term 3.
Another important learning experience I had in life has been moving away from my family to a different city to work at my first Dental Assisting job at 18 years old. This was an important time for me as I was still very young, moving 2 and a half hours away from my family and friends to start my dental career. It was also very important to me as I was working full time in a specialty practice at such a young age having only my clinical experience in school. I gained many skills such as being independent and gained a lot of insight about dental that we did not learn in school. I think the most important part of this was gaining insight about the dental life as I decided to move away to come back to school for Dental Hygiene moving away from a practice and co-workers I loved.
Lastly, one of my most important learning experiences I had in life was being promoted to a supervisor/team leader at my 1st job at just 16 years old. Again, being so young I was able to acquire many skills and work on them as I grew up. My most important skill that came out of this was initiative. I had learned from a young age to take charge in situations that I wasn’t fully comfortable with. This is important in my life now, especially in the dental world as I have learned to take initiative while I worked as a dental assistant in group projects, and in many day to day life situations.
My communication style as a “healthcare professional”
I believe one of the most important part of the communication process is the way the message is sent and what environment you are in. This is so important because I have learned that anything can be “noise” and it is extremely important to convey the message in a fashion where the client will understand. Working in practice for a year, there has been times where the client has came back not following post-op instructions right even though they were went over many times. It has made me realize that having the message sent in a proper environment clear of noise is extremely important.
My Professionalism in my Student Practice
I have learned that I am a visual learner and that I learn best by looking at diagrams and reading over notes many times when it comes to theory classes and some components of clinic such as remembering the process of things and what order to do things. I want to work on trying to listen more in lectures to try and see if that soaks in information as during class I mainly try to read over the slides and make my own notes which will help me become a better listener in general.
Myself as an Evolving Dental Hygienist – Year 1
As a dental hygienist, I believe there are many qualities, characteristics, habits and behaviours that you need to have. I believe you need to be very genuine with your client. You also need to know when to self disclose and to what extent as it is very easy to get off track and talk about yourself. You need to be able to paraphrase and active listen in a conversation between you and your client. You also need to be punctual and have good time management skills.