- Occlusal splints (also called bite splints, bite planes, or night guards) are removable dental appliances carefully molded to fit the upper or lower arches of teeth.
- (Night guards) Why they don’t work typically and how to make them work consistently. A huge practice revenue builder in treatment is waiting after having been shown the light, guaranteed!
- (Night guards) Night guards are worn to stop people from grinding or clenching their teeth, a condition called Bruxism which often happens at night. Also see Bruxism.
night guard
- A person who gives advice or makes improvements
- (doctor) a licensed medical practitioner; “I felt so bad I went to see my doctor”
- (doctor) sophisticate: alter and make impure, as with the intention to deceive; “Sophisticate rose water with geraniol”
- Doctor of the Church: (Roman Catholic Church) a title conferred on 33 saints who distinguished themselves through the orthodoxy of their theological teaching; “the Doctors of the Church greatly influenced Christian thought down to the late Middle Ages”
- A qualified practitioner of medicine; a physician
- A qualified dentist or veterinary surgeon
doctors
Munch, Edvard (1863-1944) – 1923-24 Self-Portrait. The Night Wanderer (Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway)
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a turn-of-the-century Norwegian artist, best known for his extremely personal brand of Symbolism, which helped lay the foundations for and proved a lasting influence on the later Expressionist school of art.
Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863, in the small town of Loten, Norway, as the second of five children. His father was Christian Munch, a military doctor, and his mother Laura Cathrine Munch, née Bjolstad. Edvard had three sisters, Sophie, Laura and Inger, and one brother, Andreas. Although ostensibly middle class, the family had but modest means and often struggled financially.
In 1864, soon after Edvard’s birth, the family moved to Kristiania, the capital of Norway (the city would be renamed to "Christiania" in 1878 and again to "Oslo," its present name, in 1924). In 1868, Edvard’s mother died of consumption (tuberculosis) and her sister, Karen Bjolstad, took care for the children and the household upon herself. In 1877, Edvard’s elder sister Sophie also succumbed to tuberculosis. These two deaths greatly affected the future painter and echoes of the pain and despair he felt at the time would appear frequently in his work.
Although Munch was interested in painting since he was a boy, his family was not in love with the idea and urged him to acquire a more prestigious and profitable profession. In 1879, at the age of 16, he entered the Oslo Technical College with the idea of becoming an engineer. He pursued this field of study for little more than a year before deciding that his true calling was art and dropping out of the college. Soon thereafter, he enrolled for evening classes at the Royal Drawing School in Oslo. By 1881, he was studying there full-time.
Edvard Munch was a quick and able student. At the Royal Drawing School, he was considered one of the most gifted young artists of his day. In addition to his normal classes, Munch also began taking private lessons with Christian Krohg, an established artist and good friend. He also attended the open-air summer school of Frits Thaulow at Modum.
In 1883, Munch exhibited at the Oslo Autumn Exhibition for the first time. Over the next few years, he would become a regular participant.
Munch was exposed to a wide range of artistic influence during his formative period, which lasted from about 1880 to 1889. The painter often visited Kristiania’s (Oslo’s) rather modest National Gallery, and had an avid interest in contemporary art magazines. Like most of Northern, Eastern and Central Europe, Norway was considered culturally to be a provincial backwater and, like many of his colleagues and contemporaries, Munch traveled extensively to learn from both the rich painting traditions and the latest artistic developments of Europe’s enlightened West and South.
In 1885, the painter attended the World Exhibition at Antwerp and paid a brief visit to Paris, then considered the Mecca of contemporary art. Munch was certainly familiar with the work of the Impressionists, whose large exhibition in Paris he visited that year and again in 1888, when there was another such exhibition in Copenhagen. Certainly, a variety of influences can be seen in Munch’s work of the time, such as Maridalen by Oslo (1881), Self-Portrait (1881), Aunt Karen in the Rocking Chair (1883) and At the Coffee Table (1883). Conservative tastes reigned in Oslo at the time, and much of the painter’s work was poorly received by critics.
At home in Norway, the artist was part of a group of radical young intellectuals, which included both painters and writers and espoused a variety of political views, from anarchism to socialism to Marxism. Their ideas certainly influenced Munch’s own. However, the painter’s artistic focus would always remain on himself and his own subjective experiences, almost notoriously so. Thus, he often re-visited the tragic episode of his beloved sister’s sickness and death in such works as The Sick Child (1885-86) and Spring (1889).
This latter painting delighted the critics and paved the way, in 1889, for Munch’s first solo exhibition at Kristiania. That same year, he received a scholarship from the Norwegian government to study abroad. The artist traveled to Paris, where he enrolled at the art school of Leon Bonnat. He also attended the major exhibitions, where he became familiar with the works of the Post-Impressionists. His own canvases of the time show considerable Impressionist influence: witness Rue Lafayette (1890) or Moonlight over Oslo Fjord (1891), painted during a brief return to Norway. On the other hand, Night in St. Cloud, a dramatic and highly emotional work, has all the characteristic traits of Naturalism.
In 1892, Munch visited Berlin, where he had been invited to exhibit by the Berlin Artists’ Association. The painter’s work was received very poorly, and the exhibition was closed down after only a few days, as the critics howled in outrage. Undeterred, the painte
khayelitsha trauma unit-184
Some, mostly youngsters, are already drunk and stumbling about with bottles of liquor in their hands.
Blaring music from local shebeens and partying motorists is deafening to passersby. It is, after all, the end of January and everybody is on a spending spree.
But the festive mood on Saturday night is not shared by staff at Khayelitsha’s new trauma unit. Instead, they are preparing themselves, counting down for the worst night of the month.
Weekends that fall on month-ends are known to be the busiest – "peak hour" as some in the medical field call it.
They know they can expect anything, from gunshot wounds to stab wounds, head wounds, blunt injuries and broken limbs.
And tonight Khayelitsha lives up to its reputation. Within five minutes of the Cape Argus team’s arrival at the trauma unit, a patient with assault injuries is wheeled in.
In less than 10 minutes another with stab wounds arrives hysterical, demanding to be attended to by an already overburdened staff, who are treating patients that arrived in the late afternoon.
Every five to 10 minutes bleeding patients turn up, one after the other, most of them brought in either by police or by private vehicles. A few arrive by ambulance.
Within two hours of our visit, one death at the province’s busiest trauma unit is already confirmed, and staff are rushed off their feet as more and more seriously injured patients began filling up the unit.
A bloodied man with stab wounds to his chest, who is brought into the hospital in an old bakkie, arrived too late and was declared dead on arrival.
The stench of blood that lingers in the air is another sign that it’s now "peak hour’ in the unit.
Senior doctor, Muideen Bello, who was heading up the late shift, said this Saturday night was not the busiest month-end the unit had ever seen, but said of the 92 trauma cases attended to by the unit that night, 99 percent were alcohol-related.
Due to the sheer volume of people arriving on month-ends, staff were still struggling, despite having four doctors on duty.
On the average weekend shift, the unit dealt with anything between 160 patients to over 200.
"Our busiest nights are usually Saturdays, but Sundays can also get very hectic if it’s a long-weekend because people drink excessively something that often leads to violence.
During this time we also see a lot of children who get knocked (down) by drunken drivers while playing on or crossing the streets," he said.
A trauma sister, who didn’t want to be named, said month-ends were the worst time of the month for staff, dealing with serious trauma and often abuse by patients
"Things get even worse when you have to do your job while being verbally abused by angry patients who often feel we are not doing enough for them," she said.
Even security guards get into confrontations with difficult patients and their companions.
Since the killing of a security guard in 2005 by an angry man who was accompanying a patient, the hospital has stopped allowing companions inside premises, except for critical patients.
"Many times we’ve had to take cover after people threaten to shoot us or throw objects at us," said senior security officer Vizicelo Sikweza.
DOCTORS NIGHT GUARD 