Local Anesthesia for the Dental Hygienist

This four-day course will provide the dental hygienist 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 patient 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
• Advanced local anesthesia techniques

PRE-COURSE

One month prior to the course, the lecture material and a “self-assessment” quiz will be distributed electronically to all participants to allow for self-directed learning.

Upon completion of this course the participant should have an appreciation of the necessary basic
knowledge:

• In medicine, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology for the successful administration of local anesthesia for the dental hygiene patient, and
• 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 under the supervision of members of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.