Communication and collaboration are essential dental hygiene’s abilities to present information and share opinion with a diverse audience to improve public health and well being by conducting intensified responsibilities.[2]  In terms of patients’ prognosis, diagnosis, instruction or even during medical history check, dental hygienist should perform efficient communication skills so that patients can have trust for their overall health. According to the General Practice Patient Survey, it is reported that clinician’s communication has been shown to be most closely related to patients’ overall satisfaction.[4] From this perspective, dental hygienists should focus on communication to develop trust-based relationship and interaction with clients from different cultural background. Within my last school year, I have striven for improving my communication collaboration skills with my client and outside of school. In the clinic, encouraging clients to follow my recommendations and promoting motivation depends on the dental hygienists’ interaction. Outside the clinic, it is important to communicate and collaborate with classmates, dental clinic staffs, instructors and other Rady Faculty of Health science students because I am a member of a health care inter-professional team. There are some memorable experiences that I will introduce, which have improved my communication and collaboration skills.       

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     When I first started my dental hygiene program, I began to realize the importance of communication and collaboration skills. I thought since I had an experience as a dental assistant, I already knew enough about communication and collaboration skills, but I did not know how much more I had to improve my communication skill as a dental hygienist. Through my curriculum at the dental hygiene school, I was able to learn more about communication and collaboration skills by interacting with other health professionals, clients and classmates.

     I began to understand that communication and collaboration do not simply mean working with dentists, assistants, hygienists, and receptionists who work in dental offices, but also to provide each client with the best possible care for the safety of patients. I have learned that communication and collaboration mean actively interacting with others as a dental hygienist.

 

 

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      Nowadays, dental hygienists can face challenging patients with mental problems. In my first year, I had a Challenging Communication assignment, which was a practical study of special ways of communication. In this assignment, my partner and I were assigned to a scenario with a patient suffering a bipolar disorder and we had to develop a method to communicate with the client. At first, I felt that this task was too difficult because it was a topic that I was unfamiliar with. What we had to consider was that even though bipolar clients’ physical ability may not have problem, it was a key point to identify the barrier of their mental challenge, their flow of thoughts and behavioral patterns. Interestingly, while I was researching bipolar, I realized that this disorder is quite common and there are many complicated and diverse sub-types than I thought. We also stressed that depression can make them easily anxious and reluctant to open up because of social stigma. As communication strategies suitable for them, empathy was proposed as a conclusion. Through this task, I learned how to understand and empathize on struggle of others from their perspective, especially with regard to social stigma.  This assignment allowed me to research and share regarding interpersonal relationships and therapeutic communication methods. Developing effective communication skills to foster a client-centered approach and collaboration relationship are key components of communication competency of dental hygiene.[Evidence 1]

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EVIDENCE 1. Power point presentation from the Challenging Communication assignment for bipolar client

 

       

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       As part of the school of dental hygiene school curriculum, I have to take the Interprofessional Collaborative Care (IPCC), which is collaboration of cohort group with other faculties from the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences students. The basic lesson I have learned from this exercise was to develop collaborative skills and concepts that need to be trained before my actual dental field application. To that point, I, as a dental hygiene student, engaged in tasks of teamwork, learned about social determinants of health, conflict resolution and patient's safety and so on. My cohort group worked on interprofessional collaboration through face-to-face meetings and online discussions. Last year, my cohorts’ members worked together to confirm our ideas regarding the concept of ‘social determinant of health’ and ‘interprofessional collaboration’. For example, at the first meeting, we worked on the role of health care providers by drawing a map. In the first meeting, cohort members introduced themselves and we discussed the meaning of client- centered care practice based on each member’s perspective. From the meeting, I could learn other profession students’ opinion and perspective by having a conversation with them. [Evidence 2]

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EVIDENCE 2. A concept map of interprofessional collaboration. 

 

 

     

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            One of the most memorable tasks was that we worked with a real patient named Sandy Green. Since we had decided that we needed to divide each members’ role in order to assess Sandy’s health status efficiently within assigned time, we had a briefing to discuss how, who and in what roles we were going to approach and assess Sandy. We all understood that Sandy’s priority concern was his temporomandibular disorders (TMD), thus, I, a dental hygiene student, and a physiotherapy student suggested to perform extraoral exams to find detailed symptoms and signs, which other members agreed. Also, since we had to manage time consumption in regard to each assessment, a medical student suggested checking time consumption on assessment. Two nursing students suggested that they would conduct Sandy’s medical history in order to find other health risks or other medical condition involvements. An occupational therapy student asked questions regarding Sandy’s daily life and mental stress factors. Through this interprofessional collaboration, I was able to learn other professional’s knowledge and assessment skills. Overall, each member’s interaction was active. Everyone performed each role and we shared our knowledge and had respect to each other. I think that each profession worked equally and that was an opportunity to learn and observe other professions expertise, which would be practical in the future. [Evidence 3]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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EVIDENCE 3: Interprofessional Collaboration work: Sandy Green's Integrated Care Plan

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       Another notable point is, we had to go to the neighborhood community center where we had volunteered for our community organization before. We had to take a group picture. We needed to find a place and certain time for everyone, and it was not easy. However, by communicating and making an effort, we could eventually take a group picture which, in my opinion, was an exercise for a team building based on respectful mind to each other. Therefore, I believe that when we met Sandy, we performed each role through proper communication since our members have practiced teamwork from the previous year. In that sense, we practiced more about concepts and teamwork to perform practically toward an actual person this year. We discussed what each member would do prior to meeting with Sandy to avoid overlapping assessment or interrupting other members performance.[Evidence 4]

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EVIDENCE 4: Visited Jacob Penner Park School with my Interprofessional Collaborative Care cohorts.