Perio by voice · 3 of 9
Practicing before a patient is in the chair
Three tools that measure three different things: the rhythm of dictating, how Mesio hears your voice in your room, and whether the microphone is up to it.
Nobody's first attempt should be on a patient. There is a whole tier of the product that exists so it does not have to be, and none of it touches your practice.
The Coach — five minutes, for the rhythm
A guided walkthrough inside the real charting screen on a disposable chart. Thirteen short steps: turn the microphone on, declare a section, call a tooth and wait for the confirmation tone, call depths, mark a finding, correct something by voice, correct something by hand.
It accepts what you meant rather than an exact phrase, so a mis-transcribed word does not fail a step. Nothing is saved. Do it once yourself, and once with anyone else who will chart.
Settings → Voice charting → Get ready → Open the Coach
The practice chart — for your voice, in your room
A filled-in chart appears on screen and you read it aloud. Mesio charts what it hears exactly as it would during a real exam, then scores it against what the sheet actually said. You get a number for how well it heard you, in your room, rather than how well it works in general.
The results name the teeth it struggled with, offer to learn the words it kept mishearing from your mouth, and can apply a better voice-detector setting for this microphone. There is a shorter sheet and a full one, and a mode where you watch a real session replay into the chart before you try it yourself.
Do it at the chair. Most of what this measures is the room and the microphone. A quiet front-desk run gives you a number that will not survive an operatory with suction running.
The mic check — for the hardware
A short scripted chart read into the microphone you actually use. From that single take Mesio works out whether a different listening setup would have heard you better, and by how much. You get two numbers — how you are set up now and the best it found — a list of where it struggled, and one button to adopt the better one.
Run it once per operatory, and again whenever the microphone or the room changes.
Which to run when
- New to it: the Coach, then the practice chart, at the chair.
- New operatory or new microphone: the mic check, then a short practice chart.
- A session went badly: the practice chart. It tells you whether the problem was the room, the microphone, or a handful of words worth teaching it.
On microphones
The built-in microphone on a laptop three feet away is the most common cause of a disappointing first week. A clip-on lapel microphone costs very little and changes the result more than any setting. There is hardware guidance in Settings → Audio, including what to avoid.
Four minutes, at the chair, on the microphone you will really use.