Introduction

Hi, everyone, welcome back to Part 2 of this ergonomic series brought to you by Crest and Oral-B. So my name is Stephanie Botts, I'm a practicing dental hygienist and ergonomic specialist for dental professionals, so I'm really excited to continue at this series. The first part we talked about, we talked about the unique musculoskeletal disorders that affect us in dentistry. We talked about the risk factors that we have working against us and also strategies to overcome those risk factors. And then we talked about the importance of microbreaks and provided several video demonstrations of how to do those microbreaks. Now we're going to look at how we can put this together and how we can practice more safely in the operatory. So we do have a few highlights for today. We are going to talk about how to incorporate improved ergonomics not just into your operatory life, but into your daily life as well. We'll also talk about some ergonomic equipment. There's a lot of equipment marketed as ergonomic, and it's not necessarily the case, so I hope to shed some light on some of this equipment to help you make better decisions when you're looking to invest. And then we'll also talk about both patient and operator positioning while you're in their operatory to help you with your ergonomics.

So like I said, I'm a practicing dental hygienist. I still practice about one day a week, but I also in a am an ergonomic specialist for dental professionals. So in the previous webinar I talked a little bit more about my background, but essentially I am an ergonomics assessor and I coach clinicians while they're working on patients. I also provide quite a bit of education in the form of CE like this. I travel quite a bit and I consult with companies on how to make better products to help us in dentistry improve our ergonomics.