As I was driving on my way back home this evening through the country back roads and through the boondocks of NC, enjoying the beautiful scenery of vast wheat, corn and tobacco fields, I thought of you avid followers of 2012 Summer Rotation blog. So I decided to post on here for all you who are perhaps bored out of your minds and decided to check here to see if anybody else was bored more than you or perhaps bored enough to actually sit down and write something here - or maybe someone had lost their diaries and wanted to share their late night loneliness with others, or may be there is an hungry kid in Africa who.....
First thing first, during the my past few days that I have been here at the GDS, I have seen many patients who simply can't afford more than one procedure at time, considering that they'd only pay 25$ per procedure (if they qualify for 200% below the poverty line), when they clearly need comprehensive care and not one filling or one extraction at the time. Nevertheless, this facility is providing a great deal of dental services to these individuals and at the end of the day they are still running as a business which is only partially funded by the federal and state grants and they'll still have to sustain themselves by charging the patients. I must add if it wasn't because of this clinic and places like this, many of these people will probably end up in the ER with a dental emergency or simply suffer for the long period of time before anything could be done for them if at all.
One of the thing that I was very impressed with was the amazing efforts of Dr. Doherty who is my preceptor here at the GDS and he is basically running the dental clinic both at the Snow Hill location and in Greeneville. He told me that they would see kids with orthodontic problems for many years but their families could not afford a more comprehensive ortho treatment, so for 2 years on the weekends Dr. Doherty went to DC to participate in an ortho program and got a certificate to be able to do more complex cases for these kids. I have to tell you this guy really takes pride in his work and fixing these kids' smiles gives him joy like no others. Come to think about it to a great extent he does change these kids lives for ever, when they would not have ever dreamt of such things a few years ago.
I think I will stop my rant here and leave you all to to think how you can perhaps partake in helping the underserved with your vast knowledge of dental sciences and oral health in your future dental careers!
Here are some pictures from my daily commute: Don't try this at home. Taken by professional driver/photographer!
Keyvan
Wow! So pretty!!
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