All posts by Jeanette Siladie

Health Services Administration student Amber Craven awarded Rotary Scholarship

Health Services Administration student Amber Craven
Health Information Technology and Management, Health Services Administration

Amber Craven was recently awarded a $2000 scholarship from the Rotary Club of Pinellas Park. This scholarship provides financial assistance to a degree-seeking full-time student who resides in the Pinellas Park Rotary Club area. The funds will be distributed in equal installments for the first four semesters ($500 per semester) that Amber attends as a full-time student.

Amber has already earned her Associate of Arts degree as well as an Associate of Science degree in Health Information Technology from St. Petersburg College. She is now enrolled full-time at SPC in the Bachelor of Applied Science in Health Services Administration (BAS-HSA) program.  Amber currently works at Johns Hopkins All Children’s hospital in their call center. She is a wife and mother of two small children.  Amber’s short-term goal is to earn her BAS-HSA degree as well as designation as a Certified Coding Specialist. Her long-term goal is to use her educational degrees and certificates from St. Petersburg College to obtain a management position in a local hospital.

Amber’s personal mantra can serve as an inspiration to all students: “I have perseverance and drive to become successful……obstacles can only hold you back if you let them. The most important thing to do is to find a goal or dream and don’t let go until you reach it.”

Dental CSI: SPC student experiences being a dental forensic team member

Dential CSI: SPC student experiences being a dental forensic team member
Dental Hygiene, Health Programs - All

Kimberley Daly, RDH, BASDH, never had any doubts about what her focus in the Dental Hygiene Capstone course would be: forensic odontology. For as long as she can remember, this has been a fascinating (if potentially gruesome!) interest in her life. As part of the Bachelor of Applied Science in Dental Hygiene degree completion program at St. Petersburg College, Kimberley was able to explore the unique field of forensic odontology in her outstanding capstone practicum experience. Alongside her mentor, a forensic odontologist, she was privileged to participate in two separate autopsies. In both cases, Kimberley was able to use her dental hygiene skills and assist the forensic team by taking post mortem dental radiographs as well as charting remaining teeth and identifying dental restorations.

Kimberley decided to share her story and showcase the role that dental hygienists can play in helping to identify remains and thereby helping families of the deceased find closure. She wrote an article on her capstone project and it was recently published in the RDH Magazine. Read all about her exciting dental CSI adventure here: http://www.rdhmag.com/articles/print/volume-35/issue-8/features/dental-csi.html

A Game of Med-Dominoes Anyone?

A game of med - dominoes
Health Programs - All

Students in St. Petersburg College’s Medical Terminology course (HSC 1531) are beginning their study of prefixes, suffixes, and word roots. To most people that would not sound too exciting, but to Dr. Newberry’s Monday afternoon Medical Terminology class this week, it meant game time!

Dr. Newberry uses various games during the semester to help the students learn (HSC 1531) these basic word parts.

“It is a great way to reinforce the work that they are doing both in their text and online,” Newberry said. “Active learning is proven to be most effective when students teach each other and games and teamwork help in achieving this form of active learning.”

Keep tuned to see what game they try next!

SPC Dental Hygiene Program offers local anesthesia training for dental hygienists

Dental hygienist administering local anesthesia
Dental Hygiene

Anyone who has visited a dental office can appreciate the need to manage pain for certain procedures. Since 1971, dental hygienists in some states were allowed to administer local anesthesia (LA) to aid in pain control of dental procedures including scaling and root planing. Over the years many states followed suit and changed their practice acts to include this important procedure. In 2012 Florida became the 44th state to allow dental hygienists to expand their scope of practice and administer intraoral block anesthesia and or soft tissue infiltration anesthesia to their dental hygiene patients.

St. Petersburg College’s Dental Hygiene Program prepared for implementing this in the ASDH (Associate in Science in Dental Hygiene) curriculum by first training their faculty in the spring of 2013. New graduates of the ASDH program are now automatically certified in LA, but Registered Dental Hygienists (RDH) in the community also needed the opportunity to be trained and be certified in order to add this advanced  skill and be a practice builder.

ASDH Program Director Joan Tonner and her faculty came to the rescue!  Administration of Local Anesthesia for the Dental Hygienist is a continuing education course designed for dental hygienists in the community who want to gain this new skill. The course consists of 30 hours of self-paced online instruction with assessments that can be taken at home. After completing the online component, there are four days of labs that give the participants 30 hours of hands-on clinical experience with the multiple injection techniques.

What is unique about the SPC model for this LA certification course is that instead of “observation hours,” participants practice “hands on” the administration of local anesthesia on fellow peer patient subjects in a highly supportive interactive lab environment. More than 150 dental hygienists in the community have completed this certification course and now have the professional designation of RDH-C.

It is documented that allowing the RDH-C to administer LA is beneficial for both dental patients and the clinician. Many dental hygienists and dentists report that this expanded function has a positive impact on scheduling, production, patient satisfaction and comfort and quality of dental care. May 2015 will mark the 50th year that SPC has graduated a newly minted class of dental hygienists—a lot has changed in our profession since 1965, not the least of which is the addition of the administration of local anesthesia!

SPC graduate authors article on Alzheimer’s disease relating to diabetes

Healthy brain and brain with severe AD
Dental Hygiene, Health Programs - All

The author of this article is a proud graduate of St. Petersburg College’s Bachelor of Applied Science in Dental Hygiene (BASDH) program, Barbara Hammaker, CRDH, BASDH, MHS. After graduating from our program, Barbara pursued further studies and attained her Master of Health Science degree from Nova Southeastern University. She has over 34 years of private practice experience and currently holds the position of lead instructor and program manager of Dental Hygiene at Broward College in Davie, Fla.

More than a Coincidence:  Could Alzheimer’s Disease Actually Be Type 3 Diabetes?

Numerous studies have found a strong correlation between Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Diabetes Mellitus (DM), leading some to question if AD actually could be Type 3 Diabetes. Barbara Hammaker recently published an article in our professional dental hygiene journal, Access Magazine that explores this intriguing connection:

  • Research has shown that people in the early stages of diabetes also exhibit signs of brain dysfunction. High levels of insulin resistance in the brain results in a reduced ability to use glucose to fuel normal brain function.
  • Amyloid precursor protein gene, known to be involved in AD, affects the insulin pathway. Disruption of this pathway is a hallmark of DM.
  • Post mortem samples of patients with AD had 80% fewer brain insulin receptors than those with normal brains
  • Dental Hygienists as oral health care providers might be on the forefront in helping to assist with early detection of insulin resistance. Many patients visit their dental office more regularly than their physician (think of the twice yearly cleaning schedule)—and implementing chairside glucose monitoring could become an essential vital sign to help assess dental and medical risk factors.

Read this very informative article: http://pubs.royle.com/publication/?m=21156&l=1

If you are a dental hygienist and wish to complete your bachelor’s degree, our totally online program might be just the ticket! For further information please visit our website: http://www.spcollege.edu/dental-bas/