Course Description
This four-day certification course will provide dental hygienists with both didactic and clinical hands-on training in the administration of local anesthesia. The didactic lectures will cover the following topics:
- Neurophysiology of pain
- Mechanism of nerve blockade
- Assessing patients for local anesthesia
- Pharmacology of local anesthetics
- Pharmacology of vasoconstrictors
- Calculating doses administered
- Armamentarium
- Local and systemic complications of local anesthesia and their management
- Basic maxillary local anesthesia techniques
- Basic mandibular local anesthesia techniques
- Local anesthesia failures and their management
Course Outline
This course will provide the graduate dental hygienist with an integrated overview of the anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology of local anesthesia. During the course, participants will receive both didactic and clinical “hands-on” training in the administration of local anesthesia
Approximately, two to three weeks prior to the course, you will be provided with a guest link to Dalhousie University, LMS system - Brightspace. On this course site, you will have documents that will need to be completed and returned to the CPE in advance of the course. As well you will be given access to the course reading material and expected to complete a pre-course quiz for review during class. The self-assessment quiz is being provided to assist participants in identifying areas of weakness.
The clinical “hands-on” training will allow the participant to learn the basic maxillary and mandibular local anesthesia technique by performing these techniques on fellow course participants. This will be carried out under the supervision of members of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.
1) Didactic component - At the end of the course, the course participant will be required to receive a minimum grade of 70% on the comprehensive written exam to receive a PASS in this portion of the course.
2) Clinical component - The course participant is required to receive a PASS in each of the required local anesthetic techniques. Each technique will be evaluated on the following: patient management, armamentarium, technique.
Both didactic and clinical components must be successfully passed to receive a course certificate indicating successful completion of the course.
Participants will receive 16 lecture and 13 hands-on CE credits for a total of 29 CE credits for this course.
What You Will Learn
The course is designed to provide participants with the basic principles and knowledge necessary to administer maxillary and mandibular local anesthesia for pain management. The neurophysiology of pain, the pharmacology of local anesthetics and vasoconstrictors, preparation of the armamentarium, anatomical considerations, local and systemic complications, and patient assessment and management techniques are included in the course.
Upon completion of this course, participants should know:
- The medicine, anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology needed for the successful administration of local anesthesia
- How to perform basic maxillary and mandibular local anesthesia techniques (these will be performed on fellow participants)
Notes
Instructors
Dr. James Brady, BSc, DDS, MSc
Dr. Jean-Charles Doucet, BSc, DMD, MD, MSc, FRCD(C)
Drs. James Brady and Jean-Charles Doucet are oral maxillofacial surgeons who teach in the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie University. Dr. Brady pursued advanced training in trauma, and cleft lip and palate surgery in Glasgow, Scotland. He has a wide scope of practice, including trauma pathology and TMJ surgery. Dr. Doucet completed a cleft craniofacial fellowship at the University of Montpelier 1, France. He is on the staff at the QE II Health Sciences Centre and the IWK Health Centre.