That's a Wrap!

Our April ortho courses in Tulsa were absolutely AWESOME and action filled! While we worked hard presenting two courses, the fifth session of the Robert G. Gerety Comprehensive Orthodontic Education Program and Kay Gerety's Advanced Orthodontics for Assistants, we also had fun celebrating too. We celebrated Kay's birthday with beautiful flowers and festive balloons and cupcakes that were a real treat, people are still talking about the bacon cupcakes! To top it all off we had our Graduation party to honor the accomplishments of this year's students, with the highlight of the night being Big Bob presenting the certificates to our course participants. It was just delightful to see Big Bob celebrate with yet another new class of students and to visit with so many of his past students who were attending as Monitors.

Our goal for session 5 of the doctor's comprehensive ortho course was to perform a complete review of the previous sessions and to reinforce the material that the students wanted clarified. Dr Joe Schmidbauer did a thoroughly professional job of covering a broad range of topics. It was no small feat, in our first 4 sessions we covered a tremendous amount of material. During session one our focal point was on the initial stages of treatment which covered proper record taking, cephalometric analysis, diagnosis and treatment planning, and the proper placement of brackets and bands. Session two we focused on building on the concepts from session one and introduced Big Bob's archwire sequence, force systems, ligation methods, and the use of the Multi-Distalizing Arch. In session three we covered elastic forces, pletcher springs, lip bumpers, and the Nitanium Palatal Expander and then session four was devoted to Early Interceptive Phase I treatment.

Kay had a very enthusiastic group in her Orthodontic Training for the Advanced Assistant course, and we sincerely appreciate all who attended and hope that they enjoyed the experience as much as we did. Kay led her group through a brief review of the concepts that were established in the Basic Assistant course and then focused on adding the mechanics, archwire sequence, auxiliary forces, and placing the Multi-Distalizing Arch. This course also featured several hands-on projects to develop and reinforce these new skills and Kay did an incredible job presenting her course. If all that weren't enough, Kay also conducted a review of Bracketing and Banding during lunch on Friday for all those interested.

On Sunday we had the case review segment of our ortho course which is an invaluable part of our program. The case review offers our students the opportunity to present cases for help with initial diagnosis, or cases that are in treatment, and provides them with the exposure to many different treatment objectives. Our students have chosen their cases wisely and it has been fun to watch the progress they have made with their patients. We are looking forward to seeing even more progress when we come back from our summer break!

We are so pleased to have been back in the classroom for our second year presenting the Robert G. Gerety Comprehensive Orthodontic Education Program. It was truly a wonderful experience for us to introduce Big Bob's course to another new group of students, and to see our old friends too! Thank you to all who participated in our ortho courses and who helped to make this last year such a success!

                            Have a great summer and we look forward to seeing you all again in September!