ADN108 – Advance15 – Dentistry

Advance15^TM Courses help you to develop your knowledge and clinical skills in a defined area of small animal practice. These fully flexible online courses include tutor support and interaction via an interactive discussion forum you can ask questions and join the discussion at any time, wherever you are in the world. There are no ‘real time’ sessions that you need to be available for, so this course is suitable for you whatever your time zone. All of your course materials are all recorded, and you have full access for a 12 month period. The course runs for a four week period, and you’ll get tutor support for a further 2 weeks in case you need to catch up. After that, you’ll still have full access although the tutor support will end. Complete your learning and get your CPD Certificate for 15 Hours of CPD.

Week 1

Dentistry is one of the most common procedures performed within the veterinary clinic, with over 75% of patients requiring dental treatment. For dentistry to be performed safely, our patients must be placed under general anaesthesia. The RVN is best placed to be monitoring the anaesthesia of these patients- but do you feel comfortable when you are placed on dentistry for the day? Or does your heart sink a little?

This session will give you an insight into the main concerns during anaesthesia for dentistry, and how to reduce your stress, and provide the best care for your patients whilst they undergo their vital oral surgery. We will be covering:

• Airway security
• Hypothermia
• Hypotension
• Multiple case examples for different patients undergoing differing procedures with differing underlying co existing disease processes

Anaesthesia for dentistry does not need to result in a hypothermic patient and a stressed-out nurse!

Week 2

I often describe dentistry anaesthesia as a rollercoaster ride, sometimes the track is smooth and all is well, other times there is a lot of ups and downs, which is not ideal. Gold standard analgesia will assist with smoothing out the anaesthesia journey, for the patient and the entire team.

Within this session we will talk you through:

• What drugs we can use
• Why we may choose these drugs
• What doses of drugs we can use
• Routes of administration
• Potential side effects of analgesia drugs and how to mitigate these
• Drugs covered include Alpha 2’s, opioids, NSAID’s and others you may not be using in your current protocol such as gabapentin and paracetamol
• Why local nerve blocks are so beneficial including videos of Rachel Perry administering local nerve blocks to real patients and talking you through her steps
• Multiple case examples for different patients undergoing differing procedures

Week 3

It is all very well looking in the mouth as much as possible, but we need to feel confident in what is normal, and what we may be seeing if it is not. This session is highly pictorial and will walk you through different oral presentations including:

• Differentiating between worn and fractured teeth and what treatment may be indicated
• Gingivostomatitis- and other pathologies that are often confused for gingivostomatitis
• Oral masses
• Deciduous teeth
• Malocclusion types and potential treatment for such

We will then go on to cover why we use dental charts, and the best way to complete these, with examples given of our previous patients with differing oral concerns. We will finish this session by showing you the most safe and efficient way to scale and polish teeth, alongside the reasoning as to why this is performed and managing owners’ expectations of this procedure.

Week 4

For us to perform dentistry to a high standard, efficiently and as stress free as possible we will need to be taking good care of our instruments and equipment. We will discuss:

Instrumentation:

• What instruments are used for
• Sharpening
• Correct cleaning
• Correct storage

The dental machine:

• How this should be maintained
• How to care for handpieces

We will wrap the course up with our session on dental radiography- this webinar will be led by co taught with colleague of mine, who is experienced in obtaining dental radiographs.

We will cover:

• The importance of dental radiography
• The type of dental radiography available
• Radiography safety
• How to facilitate dental radiography into your dental suite and pricing structure
• How to obtain diagnostic dental radiographs
• Common anomalies seen on dental radiographs
• What does a normal tooth look like on dental radiography
• Examples of abnormal teeth on a dental radiograph

Click here to view the full dates for this course

Tutor : Stacey Parker RVN, NCERT (ANAESTH), ISFMCERT (FN), MBVNA
Referral Veterinary Anaesthesia & Dental Nurse