Welcome back to the 4th blog post of our ergonomic series! With ergonomic loupes becoming an increasingly popular choice in the loupe market today, let’s talk about chairside tips that will help smooth your transition and maximize the benefits of ergonomic loupes.
Ergonomic loupes allow you to reduce neck flexion because you are viewing your tooth of interest from two planes. This can be disorienting at first and require both spatial and fine motor adjustments. After using traditional loupes for four years, the transition to comfortably using ergonomic loupes in my clinical care took about 2-3 weeks. Here are some tips to help you get used to ergonomic loupes in an efficient manner:
Modify your schedule
There’s nothing more stressful than trying to adjust to ergonomic loupes while doing a complex dental procedure. I recommend first getting used to your spatial awareness and the patient’s positioning during exams. This is the perfect, low-stress clinical situation to orient yourself and provide your brain the repetition to familiarize itself with the view of ergonomic loupes. Then, use your ergonomic loupes in basic operative procedures such as direct restorations. To give yourself even more of a cushion, you can add 10 minutes to your routine operative block to allow for your transitioning.
You can also consider practicing outside of patient care using a typodont to orient yourself with the ergonomic loupes. It is analogous to using a microscope for endodontic cases. It offers improved precision and accuracy that benefits provider use and patient outcomes, but takes a bit of getting used to.
Give your eyes a break every 15-20 minutes
This tip is not limited to ergonomic loupes but one that should be applied universally. After speaking with my own optometrist, I was reminded of the importance of looking “out” of our focused view every 15-20 minutes to avoid excess strain to the eye. This will also help to reduce migraines.
Pro-tip from optometrist: adding eating dark, leafy greens into your diet is great for the eyes. Vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and kale have antioxidants that protect the retina from blue light (our light cure).
Committing your working distance to muscle memory.
To do this efficiently, set your workspace operator ergonomically. I program my dental chair with two buttons: “semi-supine” for mandibular teeth and “supine” for maxillary. These should be reproducible positions your muscle memory can recall when using the ergonomic loupes.
Position of the headrest needs to be at ideally 22 inches away from any occluding surface. This gives you enough clearance to slide your provider chair through any working position you may need.
4. Communication
a. With your dental assistant: Ok this one is a little awkward and comedic. Inform your dental assistant you are using ergonomic loupes. My tech has many times wondered why I was staring straight at them when in actuality, I was working on #19. The harmony in four-handed dentistry depends on the assistant predicting the provider’s next needs. Your positioning of the patient and your chair may differ as well when using the ergonomic loupes. For example, when prepping #14 crown, I have my patient turn their head to the right. I move to the 3 o'clock position and my assistant knows to adjust her position accordingly as well.
b. With your patient: With ergonomic loupes, it’s hard to wear them while communicating with your patient. With prismatic or Galilean loupes, I could “look out” of the view to speak with my patient. Now, I rest my loupes along my neck to review findings and discuss a treatment plan.
As a dentist early into her career, prioritizing ergonomics has been a huge focus for me in my clinical care. Enova’s ergo elite 5.5x loupes have helped me to improve my posture throughout the work day and clinically made me a better dentist as I’ve become more meticulous in the art component of dentistry. As awareness of “tech neck” and “dental neck” from 40 hour work weeks of bending our necks grows, it’s my goal that this blog series reminds you to nurture the body that allows us to provide dentistry and healing to others.
Outside of dental care, I’ve been working with an occupational and physical therapist to strengthen my upper body and thumb muscles. I’ve got a ways to go in my career, but can’t harp on the importance of protecting our body and mind. If you’ve found this blog post helpful, check out the first three posts in our ergonomic series:
If you’ve made it to the end of this blogpost and are considering purchasing ergonomic loupes to prioritize your own work-life happiness, I recommend reaching out to your local Enova representative. Their customer service and accessibility nationwide has made my relationship with a loupe servicer an easy one to trust. Enhance your dental practice by integrating our ergonomic loupes by getting started here: https://goenova.com/contact/!
If you select Enova as your loupe of choice and found this blog post helpful, share it with a friend in dentistry or hygiene and use the code “TPDG24” online/with your local representative. In our next development of the ergonomic series, we’ll be diving into how to efficiently transition into your ergonomic loupes.
#dental school #interview #admissions #ergonomics #enovaloupes #enovaillumination #loupes #dentaleducation #dentistry #zumax #zumaxmicroscopes
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