Applying Theoretical Knowledge in Real-life Situations

Reflection Paper
Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
October 13, 2020
Understanding how to apply theoretical knowledge in real-life situations is essential for any dental hygienist student. It allows him to perform his duties in line with the standard procedures and resolve any difficulties during his future practice. In this article, I would like to reflect on some of the essential things that I learned during our practicum in doing dental x-rays and how I used my theoretical knowledge in adapting to it. I would mainly like to focus on the two learning objectives, namely; (1) how to properly manipulate digital x-radiation exposure and (2) how to utilize exposure techniques to improve patient care and safety. All in all, I realized that a solid foundation of our theoretical knowledge and leadership skills is essential to resolve any problems in practice.
During the practicum, one of the main difficulties that we faced are related to the variety of our ideas and our schedules. On the one hand, because of the various concepts that we have in line with how to utilize exposure techniques to improve patient safety, reaching a conclusion or an actionable step took some time. For example, in one of the discussions that we had, we argued whether a special case would benefit more with the use of an occlusal x-ray compared to a panoramic x-ray.
On the other hand, another problem that we had was our own schedules. Since our schedules are not perfectly aligned due to the pandemic circumstances, we found it challenging to agree with a single time to schedule our online meeting. Additionally, there are also times when one of our classmates would experience internet difficulty since some areas had rot...