Frequently Asked Question

You should record all patient visits on the Dentistry Portfolio. The Portfolio contains your record of clinical experience and your entries are used to establish that you have met your clinical targets.

At the end of your clinical session your tutor will sign off your book and provide feedback on the treatments you have carried out during each patient visit. These records must be transcribed to the Portfolio - one visit entry on the Portfolio for each visit recorded in your book.

Where possible these should be entered on to the Portfolio on the same day that the treatment was provided. We strongly advise against letting your treatments build up and then entering them in bulk because:

• If your Portfolio is not up to date it is harder for your clinical tutors to see if you are starting to fall behind and would benefit from additional support
• You are likely to have forgotten the details of the visit which will lead to lower quality reflection - this may negatively impact upon your professional development.
• Entering them all at once turns a series of quick, small jobs into a larger task that requires dedicated time

The remainder of this document walks you through recording a patient visit on the Portfolio:

• After logging in, click on the name of the corresponding book for you clinic in the left hand menu.
• The book's home page will list each of the separate clinics/sections within that book. Find the correct section of the book and click the adjacent "Record a Visit" button.

You will then be prompted to complete the details of the visit:

• At the top, enter the patient's hospital number or indicate if the work carried out was performed as a skills lab activity (including both work in the CSLE or on a chair-mounted phantom head)
• If the patient was a child, ensure that the child patient box is ticked so that the entry counts towards any paediatric targets.
• Enter the date of the visit
• Optionally, you can enter a description to provide additional context to the visit that perhaps isn't captured by the list of treatments provided.

Next, you build up a list of the treatments provided:

• From the dropdown, select the name of the procedure you wish to record. This should match the name of the procedure signed off in your book - you can search the list via the box at the top of the dropdown. Occasionally, there may be discrepancies between the name of a procedure used in your book and its name on the Portfolio. All procedures within your scope of practice should be listed so you may need to search under different names. If you are unsure, ask a tutor or contact the help desk.
• Depending on the type of treatment selected, a dental chart may be shown. Its behaviour adapts to the procedure selected prompting you to select:
  • The whole tooth you worked on (e.g. to select which tooth you extracted)
  • Multiple teeth (e.g. which area of the mouth did you anaesthetise, on which quadrants did you carry out a root surface debridement - NB you can select a whole quadrant at once by holding down shift whilst selecting the teeth)
  • The individual surfaces of a tooth you worked on (e.g. which surfaces did you restore)
  • Nothing at all. Where a treatment does not relate to a specific tooth (e.g. oral health education) the chart is not shown and you do not need to select a tooth.
  • NB Where the chart is presented, you should make an appropriate selection. Failure to do so may cause your entries to not be counted towards your targets.
• Finally, you should enter the grade you gave yourself and the one your tutor provided. 
  • NB 1: Your selected tutor grade must match the grade signed off in your book. Your entries will be periodically checked and any discrepancies will cause you to fail the audit.
  • NB 2: Some procedures are regarded as "Not Assessed". If you have selected one of these procedure, the grade boxes will not be displayed and you do not need to select a grade.
• If you wish to record specific thoughts or were provided with specific feedback for an individual treatment, you can enter this by clicking the "Reflect on this treatment individually" link. 
• If you have only provided one treatment during the visit you can continue below. To record additional treatments, click the "Add Treatment" box to add another treatment form.

Once you have built up the list of all the treatments you carried out, you can enter your thoughts on how the visit went:

• Enter your reflection on the visit. Read the prompts below this form field to help you think of things you could reflect upon and develop your reflective practice. NB as a minimum you should enter the reflection entered in your log book, however, you are free to elaborate upon this if you have further thoughts you wish to record.
• Select the professionalism and patient management grades you gave yourself.

• Select the name of the tutor who assessed your work. This list defaults to a list of tutors who usually work on this clinic, but a full list of all tutors is available from the adjacent "Show All Tutors" button.
• Enter the feedback provided by your tutor. Whilst you are free to elaborate upon your own reflection, other than minor changes for abbreviations, your feedback should be entered as provided by your tutors verbatim. The accuracy of your entry will be compared with your book during audits.
• Finally, enter the professionalism and patient management grades awarded by your tutor. Again, the accuracy of these will be checked during audit.

You may now click Save, or Save & Add Another if you wish to record another entry from this section of your book.

The above is intended to be a written introduction to entering your patient visits. A series of instructional videos will be provided via Blackboard when you begin treating your own patients.

See also: How do I enter a visit where I observed or assisted? (includes guidance on 2nd BDS Assisting a Senior Student sessions)