by Jule Kucera | Jun 6, 2021 | Blog
Let’s go back to the clinic, back to the Accutane study, back to that sixteen-year-old standing in his mother’s shadow. Let’s call him Keith. (I do not remember his real name.) At Keith’s first appointment, it was his mother, solidly built, who spoke on his...
by Jule Kucera | May 30, 2021 | Blog
To tell this story, I’m making up some names, using ‘Brenda’ for my boss’s pretend name, and ‘Doug Russo’ for the pretend name of a patient. It was a Tuesday morning, and while the Transplant Clinic was hustling on their side, the Derm side was uncharacteristically...
by Jule Kucera | May 23, 2021 | Blog
The interesting thing about working at a university in a staff role is that those roles, especially the ones lower on the totem pole, tend to be populated with people who are working the job as a means to a different end. There were four of us who worked the front...
by Jule Kucera | May 16, 2021 | Blog
I did things at Hennepin County Medical Center that most hygienists never do: I cleaned someone’s teeth in the O.R. I asked a teenage sex worker about her practices, to inform my opinion of the ulcerated lesion in her mouth. I called Social Services when I asked the...
by Jule Kucera | May 9, 2021 | Blog
After the dentist fired me from ‘the good dental practice,’ I quit the pedo mill. It was ruining me as a hygienist. My next two part-time jobs were in a Minneapolis community clinic that catered to the LGBTQ+ community, and a suburban office whose patients included...
by Jule Kucera | May 2, 2021 | Blog
My first career was as a dental hygienist, and the first job I got after graduating was in a ‘pedo mill,’ meaning a pediatric dental office where the hygienists saw a ridiculous number of patients each day. Our schedule was a kid every fifteen minutes, which meant I...
