Category: My ideas

My opinions and ideas about different matters.

Waste Not Want Not

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Is there something in dentistry that could be recycled?

I have had this great idea for ages and I just realised this blog would be just perfect channel to get it out in the open.

I am into recycling and saving our planet in my personal life and because of this it is sometimes hard to work in a profession that produces lots of waste every day. Waste that we do not sort in any way (well clinical waste and domestic waste in UK but that’s not really sorting in the matter of recycling). 

It has forced me to think that could dentistry be more sustainable? 

Don’t be alarmed. I’m not going to suggest that we start to wash our gloves and saliva ejectors.

Expensive Business

Materials and equipment are very expensive in dentistry. Sometimes we order equipment that for one reason or another lays in the storage shelf nearly unused.

Sometimes we use only half a pack of costly composite filling material before we order a new one – the one that just came out in the market and is supposed to be better than the previous ones. The old half-a-pack composite filling material stays in the shelf until it is out of date and is thrown away eventually.

That is just one example. Let me tell you another one. Somebody in my current workplace thought it would be a good idea to buy the EMS Air-Flow S1 for soda whitening. Then she changed jobs and the brand new Air-Flow was forgotten. The two hygienists and four dentists in the practice did not think there was any benefit of using the Air-Flow. Money wasted.

One more. The root canal files. Our practice has so many unused packages of root canal files that no-one uses. Perhaps because of the Wave-One that is easier and more user-friendly than traditional files. But I’m sure there is somebody that still uses these traditional files? 

THE Grand Idea

Could these unwanted materials and equipments be sold second-hand to the practises who need them? The price would be lower of course than when buying new ones.

I think they could. It would need a website for sure. Some kind of dental online flea-market. And if it was global it would be even better. But then again it’s not about saving our planet because of the carbon footprint. So let’s do it locally so that we will maintain our humble idea of recycling (but I still want my share of the advertisement income the website will have because of its popularity). 

My take on the US elections 2016

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Are the candidates just spinning a web of lies before the elections?

I’ve worked in the heart of two capitals on my professional life. Every now and then there were well-known people who came to have dental treatment done at our practice. Millionaires, pop-stars, politicians. Some of them I saw regularly and got a pretty good idea of the person behind the public figure.

There has been lots of discussion about the presidential elections in the US. Which candidate is the best one to be the number one leader in the world (was tempted to use the Master of the Universe comparison again, but managed to hold my tongue)? Who definitely should not be elected, let alone to be a candidate? Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Trump… One of them will be elected.

But how do the US citizens know if the candidate is able to look after the country and it’s people? Do they keep the promises they make? The time after the elections often reveal that the promises were just promises and they were made only to win votes. Highly annoying in my opinion.

But guess what? I have an answer for that problem.

Let’s make the dental records of the candidates available for everyone to see. I mean every detail from the charts to the dentist’s/hygienist’s reports of the visits.

Why?

What we record on every visit is the state of the mouth. The amount of plaque, calculus and bleeding. We record the interview of the oral hygiene habits and the recommendations given. Often we write to the patient record the state of the oral hygiene.

OH good

OH poor

OH needs improving

In my opinion it tells a lot about any person if a visit after visit the patient’s records state that patient’s oral hygiene is poor and that the patient has been given recommendations and information but there has not been improvement in oral hygiene.

If the person is not able to look after her/himself (for any reason), how is she/he able to look after the whole nation? This comes to my mind every time I see a familiar face of a politician in the papers. A politician who I have unsuccessfully tried to put in the right path in dental health for many years.

P.s. That was the closest this blog will get to the politics.