'Learning and Serving in the Field of Dentistry"
Dental Shadowing & Assisting - Fidler on the Tooth
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners.
The primary focus of my activity will be to volunteer at Fidler on the Tooth, a dental practice run by UW alum, Dr. Vicki Fidler. My time will be spent shadowing, working sterilization, and cleaning rooms to help operations run smoothly. I am looking forward to actively participating in the office and plan to look at every opportunity and interaction as a learning experience. With a Washington State Dental Assistance Certificate under my belt, I hope to be able to learn some skills to be able to apply in the future. I plan on volunteering my time to Dr. Fidler and this project in order to serve the U-District and surrounding communities.
Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition.
In addition to serving Dr. Fidler and her team with operations around the practice, I will be actively serving my community. Through this experience I am hoping to learn more from my community as to what current issues or barriers are in place that are holding them back from maximum oral health, and thus overall health. Are there certain reasons/ outside factors that prevent people from coming into the office or maintaining their oral health? Do they see oral health one-dimensionally or as a gateway to overall health? This project embodies service because I am investing my time to learn more about the dental field and my community to create a practice that will one day cater to their needs and not my assumptions of what they need.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it?
There is no better way to know if a career is right for you than to experience first hand. After two summer internships with Boeing, I learned that I strive to pursue a profession where I have a direct relationship and positive impact on my community. By reevaluating my career options, I started by taking a step back and thinking about the things I enjoy the most. With a love for all things interdisciplinary, a need to make an impact in my community, and an obsession with caring for my expensive teeth post-braces, I decided Dentistry sounded like a good fit for me. With this experiential learning project, I am hoping to obtain hands-on experience in the field to see if I can picture myself doing the extensive work of a Dentist.
How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences?
I was accepted into the Foster School of Business entering freshman year and declared Biology as a second degree to pursue shortly after. For two and a half years I battled the pressure of picking one degree over the other, but deep down I knew I wanted to do both; I just didn't know how. Once I stopped looking at my education one-dimensionally - that my major would determine my occupation - and started to see my dual degrees as a means to develop skills for wherever my dreams led me, things fell into place. Dentistry consists of art, science, business, and impacting your community; everything I have always valued and loved. Dentistry is as interdisciplinary as I am and I am excited to see whether my experiences meet my expectations.
How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners?
The larger goals at Fidler on the Tooth include providing a safe space for high dental fear patients, accommodating the busy people of Seattle, and promising the highest quality care. My involvement in serving Dr. Fidler and the community at large will uphold these standards by positively contributing to the success of Dr. Fidler's practice and ensuring every patient leaves feeling safe and satisfied. I see it as my duty to prepare myself as much as possible to experience early the many challenges and situations I will face so that handing emergencies or unexpected situations may seem second nature. Investing in my future patients and practice by getting exposed early to the field is an opportunity I am eternally grateful to Dr. Fidler for.
Estimated hours per week: 6
Estimated project start: 07/07/2014
Estimated project end: 06/19/2015
Reflection
Initially, I wanted to volunteer my time at Fidler on the Tooth to obtain a first-hand experience on what the workday of a dentist consists of to see if I could picture myself becoming a dentist in the future. Previous summer internships at Boeing taught me that as important as it is to figure out what you do like to do, it is equally important to find out what you do not enjoy doing or could not see yourself doing.
A year went by, and helping out at Fidler on the Tooth taught me that running a dental practice is hard work. While a lot of things about running a dental office are pretty routine, the people are not, and that is what makes dentistry exciting. Just as no two people are the same, no two mouths are either, so as a dentist, you have the unique position to play detective and find the story behind each mouth's dental health through x-rays, pictures, and various sensitivity tests. Sometimes the cause of a problem is pretty obvious, other times they are not. Once you determine the problem, you then get to explain to the patient exactly what is going on in a way they can understand, and the different options they have to fix or prevent further damage. Over the year, I got to observe how Dr. Fidler and her team cater to each patient's wants and needs. Advertising the practice online as an accommodating place with resources for high dental-fear patients, I had the privilege of being a part of an office that offered movie glasses, blankets and pillows, anesthetics, nitrous ("laughing gas"), and even stuffed animals for patients to hold if they were feeling uneasy or nervous.
As the person in charge of media, social network posts, and checking online reviews often, I read testimony after testimony of patients thanking Dr. Fidler and her team for providing "the best dental visit I've ever had" and swearing that they have never felt more at ease or as pain-free at a dental office - many even compared it to a spa! With a 99.4% "would refer friends and family" rating, Fidler on the Tooth is the only dental practice I've ever had the opportunity to shadow with, and saying that I lucked out is an understatement. Not only did I learn how to "flip a room," sterilize equipment, stock rooms and storage, and all the 'little things' that allow a dental office to run, but through Dr. Fidler's interactions with her patients, I learned that the most important thing you can do as a health professional is to listen to your patient and see their concerns as valid. The reason Dr. Fidler and her team are so successful is because they take the time to listen to all of their patients and never question their concerns. If they feel more comfortable using warm water as opposed to cold, they will make sure to make an online note under the patient's chart so that next time the same patient comes back, the dental assistant will receive a 'flag' and will know that this patient specifically requested warm water. It may not seem like much, but it makes the biggest difference to her patients and I've seen it time and time again.
Over the course of the year, I was able to tie some relevant coursework to my time at Fidler on the Tooth. My Management 300 class focused specifically on Organizational Management and after analyzing different companies on their relations with staff and suppliers, I was able to analyze the relationships at Fidler on the Tooth. The Management 320 class I took this Spring focused on Business - Government - Society relationships and Business Ethics and these relationships are very prevalent in the dental world as well, as dentists must abide to federal regulations, ethical principles, and think about their Corporate Social Responsibility as they serve their communities. My Honors 222 class on 'Pain' introduced me to the real concern that many health professionals easily dismiss pain that cannot be physically traced to tissue damage as invalid and it made me proud to think that Fidler on the Tooth is an exception. The class and my experience made me wonder that perhaps that's all anyone is ever looking for in a health-care professional - someone willing to listen to their concerns and see that their concerns are addressed. It seems so simple, so common sense... and yet I have heard horror stories over the years from friends and family that not all health professionals approach health care in this way.
In short, my time at Fidler on the Tooth showed me that dentistry is as inter-disciplinary as I thought, and a field I can definitely see myself putting the time and energy in to benefit and give back to my community. The most important things I learned at Fidler on the Tooth probably had nothing to do with the technical aspects of dentistry, but rather the relationships you have with your community. Dentists should have the dedication and responsibility to be patient-centered, employee-centered, and supplier-centered. The relationships you have with each one of these stakeholders is key to having a successful practice. The technical aspects of dentistry will come during my time in dental school, but the "relational aspects" I learned at Fidler on the Tooth and this experience are invaluable, and I recognize that these aspects may not even be taught in school. I am thankful for the opportunity Dr. Fidler gave me and will forever be grateful for the time and resources she invested by trusting me to help around her practice and patients. I hope that one day I will have the opportunity to give back - either to Dr. Fidler personally - or indirectly by giving another student a chance and opportunity to learn everything they can by one day shadowing in my own office and being that support system that Dr. Fidler and her staff were to me.
