 Hi everybody, Andrea here with dental oil tutoring, so let's talk about special needs. And what do you have to know for the board exam? Or what do you have to know about special needs being a dental professional, a dental hygiene student, and dental assisting student? So special needs isn't just referring to patients with disabilities, it's referring to patients of any kind of special need. Meaning are they anxious for their dental appointment? Are they in a wheelchair where certain things are going to have to be adjusted because they can't use their left arm, so they might not be able to brush their teeth if they're left-handed? Or what if they have a caregiver looking after them? What if they've been through a heart attack? What if they've been through a stroke? There are a number of different things pertaining to special needs and also seniors. So let me share a PowerPoint with you here. So this is a PowerPoint that I have developed for my students in the board exam prep academy where I'm teaching them special needs for the board exam and what they have to know. So this is a 62 page PowerPoint, a 62 slide PowerPoint I should say. So there's a lot happening, but let me go through a couple slides with you and teach you a little bit about special needs because this is why you have clicked this video. So basically, who are special needs? The main thing I want students to know is that it's not just about if a patient is in a wheelchair. Almost anybody can have some type of special need, I like to call it. What if they're super anxious for their dental appointment and that's preventing them from booking a dental appointment for 10 years? You know, they're not handicapped per se, but they kind of are because they're that afraid. They are that fearful. Our responsibility as dental professionals is to eliminate any barriers to care. Whether that be they're in a wheelchair, we need to help them. We need to help their caregiver have the best oral hygiene possible but also how to get them to the dental office or should we be going to them for their teeth cleanings? Is that easier? All kinds of different things. So that's all what this slide is saying here, that it's anybody with any type of special needs where they have poor oral hygiene because of it. And then the next slide. So there's different types. So this is kind of going through what I just said. So people with mobility issues, mentally disabled individuals, immuno compromised. So let's say they've had a heart attack but it wasn't just your regular horrible heart attack, but they were in the hospital for months. Who knows, right? So they have developed poor oral hygiene because of that. What if they had such a bad heart attack where they're not the same since then? They need help brushing their teeth or something along those lines. Well, this can happen. So again, it's not just being physically handicapped that we can see, but it could be kind of internally too. And then aging and the elderly, if somebody has dementia, L-timers. It doesn't matter if they're 90 years old or 53 years old. They have a handicap of some kind, a special needs of some kind. Different types of mental illnesses. They might look fine to you or they might not seem entirely fine, but it really depends on what mental illness they have. Some days might be better than others. So again, our job as dental professionals is to help those patients out. If some days are worse than others, they can barely get out of bed. Is it our job to make them feel bad for not brushing and flossing that day? They have barely been able to eat or do anything. No, it's not. But let's focus on the days that they do feel good. Maybe brush an extra time per day that day. Maybe use the water pick a little bit more that day. So if maybe tomorrow or the next day, you're not feeling quite right, you're having a bad day, your oral health isn't going to suffer. So this is our job as dental professionals. And not to forget children, adults, children, it doesn't matter. That's the last point here. So children with behavioral and emotional conditions, think ADHD. This is a special need. We treat them differently than somebody else who doesn't have ADHD. Somebody in a wheelchair, we treat them differently than somebody who's not in a wheelchair. So when we treat somebody differently due to their condition, that is considered somebody with special needs. Also keep in mind, we need to think about different appointments for them. Maybe they need shorter appointments. Maybe they do better on certain days where they want longer appointments. Because if they're there already, they're telling you, I don't wanna come back. I'm here already, do whatever you can. But most people do prefer shorter appointments so it's not as stressful. So definitely things to keep in mind. What if they need to be put to sleep for their dental work? And then dentures. So this is kind of going into the aging and the elderly. Dentures isn't a special need per se, but when talking about aging and the elderly, typically they're going to have dentures. So in our board exam prep academy class, I go through a little bit more about partial dentures, complete dentures, how to clean the dentures, typical questions they have on the board exam. Denture stomatitis, look at this you guys, not something you want, right? Denture stomatitis has many different looks to it. So I have a couple photos for them here. I have a couple photos for you, of course, but I won't spend too much time on that because it could be a whole other class, a whole other video. But you get the idea. Aging populations, different things that happens in seniors. Different things that are going to happen depending on if it's a child or an adult who's in a wheelchair. I talk about different percentages here too, still going through the aging population, different types of denture lesions. These are all slides for the board exam prep academy, but in this video here, I just wanted to give you guys an overall input. Seniors aging is considered special needs, but even if they have less teeth, if they're missing a lot of teeth, typically they want to tell you, well, I don't have to come in for my teeth cleaning because I have like three teeth. From my experience, from my 18 years experience, those three teeth are going to be so bad that I will probably spend an hour just on those three teeth because that calculus, the plaque, the bacteria is so bad. So things we have to educate seniors about. The mouth, natural teeth, theories and aging. So maximum lifespan is, the number of years humans can live. We're not going to say the maximum lifespan is 300, right? And then the life expectancy is the number of years an average human can expect to live. Again, we're not going to say 300. We might say 80 years, we might say 100 years, we might say 70 years. Back then, back a while ago, it was like age 45. So things have definitely changed and I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Some theories of aging that you have to know for the board exam, I'm not going to bore you too much in this video here, but are you guys starting to get the idea? Different types of special needs and this is patients with medical special needs. So heart problems, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, angina, all of these patients are going to be people where we treat them differently. We, they get more care because they need more help. Somebody who's had a heart attack is going to be treated a bit differently than somebody who hasn't. Somebody who's had cancer is going to be treated differently than somebody who hasn't. So I hope this video helped you guys. If you're not part of my VIP board exam prep academy and you are going to be taking the board exam soon, you definitely should be a part of that tutoring course. It is a full thing. I can leave the link for you guys down below. Check it out in the description of this video. It's learn at your own pace, live classes. There are class recordings. Everything is learned at your own pace. So you can log in online anytime and get started. I've been teaching now, oh my gosh, for about 18 years. So I would love to help you pass the board exam and I still maintain a 99.8% helping students pass the board exam. So I know I can help you. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this video on special needs. Comment below if you need anything and something new is I do have now a new dental L network community. So also check the link down below in the video description. You should be a part of that community. It's a separate online form where I give away free stuff all the time. So you should definitely check it out. If you're a dental professional, a dental hygiene student, a dental assisting student, it's all things encompassing. We all love dental. Let's all join in on the community together. So thank you guys so much for watching. Click like if you like this video that does help me in my channel and I'll talk to you guys very soon.