Handy

We did our sedation training today and it wasn’t at all what I was expecting!

I thought we were going to be offering relative analgesia (or ‘happy air’ as we used to call it in my former job with the Community Dental service) but the training was actually for intravenous sedation.

The subject was quite dry to learn; I felt like I’d had sedation more than once.
Thankfully, the afternoon session was a hands on one, so we practiced applying tourniquets and locating veins before practicing our cannulation skills on a fake arm.

The trainers suggested we might want to practice on each other to get a bit more realistic experience, but the veins in my hands are knackered after the failed attempts of cannulation I had when I was in hospital last year (from so called ‘qualified’ technicians), so there’s no way I’m offering up them up to anyone.

I think perhaps my boss is being a bit over zealous (it wouldn’t be the first time!) as there are four of us now who each need to complete 20 supervised cases before we can be passed off as competent.
I don’t think it would be ethical to do it on every patient that comes through the door, but that’s kind of what we’d need to be doing to get the required numbers between us. Plus the fact he can’t do any work while he supervises, so that further compounds the issue.
It’s nice that he wanted all of us to have the opportunity though; not many bosses (especially in dentistry) have that mindset, so I’m grateful for that :-)

DQ x