Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The best dental hygenist ever.

My son Chip and I went up the stairs of the dentist office yesterday for my semi-annual trip to the dentist. After the check-in, we went back to visit Amy, my hygenist, in a patient room of Dr. Goldsmith's office. Amy is sweet as can be and she has the way of Kaizen in mind as she does her work.

I was questioning her on the best way to improve my flossing and Amy did something I did not expect. She had me hold a hand mirror and she adjusted lamp and I could see exactly how she flossed my teeth. In my 40 years of going for checkups, no one had ever shown me how to floss correctly in a visual way like this before. She was showing me the correct technique on my own set of chompers! Both Chip and I were very impressed. Her next step was even more unexpected.

She had me take that same mirror and show me how to examine the color of my gums. If the gums around the teeth were very red and then pink under that, there was an infection indicating that flossing and brushing were not doing the job. If the gums around the teeth were all the same "coral pink" color then I was doing the cleaning correctly. So, Amy gave me the proper flossing technique and the visual feedback loop to understand if my improvement in dental hygiene is working. Very cool.

Tomorrow I'll share Amy's next coming Kaizen and something she did for an elderly patient that still blows me away.

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