Walking into a dental operating room, you can see all the tools they will use. The sight alone can be intimidating. All the shiny seel gleaming back at you, ready to poke and prod. Most of the time, we ordinary people do not even know what they are all for, but we can generally infer what their job is or find out when the surgeon sticks it in your mouth to work. My goal is to make a new tool for dental practices that will make working more convenient. I want my new tool to be an all-in-one for the little pencil-looking tools. This will make dental work more convenient and faster as the surgeon will not need to keep swapping their tools while working.
This all in one will need to have two of the most used tools on it. The first most used tool is the plaque scraper. This tool is a short steel rod with curved pointy bits on the end. These sharp bits are what is used to get into the nooks and crannies to clean any build-up a toothbrush can not reach. This tool needs to be implemented in my new utensil because it is one of the more frequently used use by dentists. Paired with this tool is another important one called a mouth mirror. Its job is just as it sounds, to put a small mirror in your mouth so the surgeon can get behind your teeth without sticking their head in.
My new tool will be able to swap heads and combine them if need be. What this means is it will look something like a pocket knife, just a bit bigger and with some mechanical functions. The plaque scrapers and mouth mirror will be able to come out of the pocket knife-like design to either attach to make one tool, thus giving the surgeon a free hand. They can also be used independently from one another as most dentists do right now, as that may be most comfortable for them.
The mechanical functions of my new tool will include a button press to change the heads of the scraper. This is helpful because a lot of time, the dentist is getting up and down from their chair to swap sizes of the plaque scraper. The different sizes will be on independent buttons so the surgeon can memorize the button press required and make their output of cleaned teeth faster than usual. This function also saves the dentist from getting up and down all the time to swap heads or sizes.
This new tool I am trying to make will be revolutionary as it will cut times per patient in half. Not because the surgeon is being sloppy but because they do not have to get up to swap tools so often. The impact of having all the tools you will need in the palm of your hand is going to be amazing. The speed of dental surgeons will significantly increase along with their effectiveness. I hope that dental practitioners pick up on this once released as this tool is being made for them. With so many tools at their disposal, it is no wonder that sometimes they will grab the wrong one or the wrong size. It will be handy to have all of them in one place, the palm of their hand.
