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At Temple we are required to do 12 days of outreach.  Outreach is when we travel to a satellite clinic off of the dental school campus to provide dental care.  There are about 6 places to choose from.  Some are located further away, some are downtown and there are a couple of pediatric dental clinics to choose from.  One clinic is located inside the dental school and is associated with the Ryan White funding.

I have worked a couple of times in our Ryan White clinic (called the Rosenthal Clinic) and didn’t have much success with getting any points.  At Temple, each procedure we do is worth a certain amount of points, so each day you want to be working towards getting points because you need points to graduate.  All I did in the Rosenthal clinic was adjust 5 dentures.  A few of my classmates however, were able to get many points during their ‘duty days’ in Rosenthal.

I went to another clinic called CVIM (Community Volunteers in Medicine) last week and did a class II amalgam on #30, a class III composite on #8, and a cleaning.  I don’t think we get points for the cleaning while off campus, but I was able to get a few operative points.  It was slightly frustrating because there were only 3 patients all day long and I felt like I could have seen some more patients.  The patients I did see only had one lesion each, so there was no chance to do multiple restorations.  With outreach duty days it depends on the day and luck of the draw with regards to amount of points you will get.  A classmate of mine went to CVIM a few days before me and got close to 30 points.  I got 5 points during my experience at CVIM for comparison.

Today I went to Doc Breslers Cavity Busters Pediatric Dentistry clinic.  It was an eventful day.  I started out with a simple class I composite on #30.  Then moved on to another girl who needed four sealants on all her 1st molars followed by an extraction of #Q.  The sealants went fine.  When I got to the extraction I placed the topical all over the tooth and then asked the girl how many prizes she wanted.  She said she wanted four.  So I replied with, “Well, how about we give you EIGHT!”  Right when her brain was processing the amount of prizes she was going to get (I could tell by the size of her eyeballs), I used some gauze to extract tooth Q.  Squeeze, twist, pull. She didn’t even know it was out until I told her.  I love the mind games in pediatric dentistry.  I love using those same mind games on adults.  After that another patient needed an extraction of T.  Then the next patient needed a pulpotomy and SSC.  So in 4 hours at the outreach clinic I was able to do what takes 4 months in our dental school pediatric clinic.  2 extractions, 4 sealants, one occlusal composite, and a pulpotomy and SSC.

What makes the dentistry smoother at these outreach clinics?   The patient has already been treatment planned, the teeth are clean, and the next step is where the dentist comes in.  It was a nice experiance to sit in the chair, numb the child, wait 5 minutes, do the dentistry, and then move on to the next patient, all the while you have an assistant with you retracting and suctioning and giving moral support. :)  Our dental work is still regulated, but it goes much smoother vs. the dental school where there are more students per faculty member, no assistants, and we are required to do everything. (set up, break down, insurance, billing, hygiene, scheduling, etc.)  I am not knocking dental school, because it is what it is, but it was nice to get a good look at what lies at the end of the tunnel.

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