2012 Summer Rotations: Maine

Greetings from Maine! It has been fun reading about everyone’s experiences. Courtney and I are in Bangor, ME, staying at a house built in 1851 which used to be the home of Lincoln’s vice president, Hannibal Hamlin. We have had housemates from the dental schools at University of Iowa – no, they have not heard of Dr. Eric Rivera, and Tufts, and medical students from the University of New England. There are also dental students from Boston University at the clinic. It has been interesting to find out about the different dentistry programs. It seems that New England schools provide somewhat more limited clinical experience while Iowa’s program is very similar to UNC.

The dental clinic is a huge facility currently being expanded to about 40 chairs. The construction was completed earlier this year and they are putting together and stocking the operatories in the new wing. There are six full-time dentists, four GPR residents and four other externs. There are eight hygienists and they just added six new dental assistants. It is a large operation and they serve a lot of patients. They are starting a new pedo residency program this summer and are also expanding the existing GPR program. In addition to the federal programs, there is MaineCare which covers everything for children through age 21 and provides free care or discounted fees on a sliding scale for adults who qualify based on income. For example, endo and post/core are covered under MaineCare and the crown is around $200-300.

We have an assigned operatory and an assistant who works with us. It has been really nice not to have to schedule patients, to set up and break down operatories, and to balance mirror, handpiece and suction. The work is mainly restorative, extractions and endo on both adults and children. We get to use the rotary ProTaper for instrumentation and Touch ‘N Heat for vertical condensation and backfill for endo, which has been a great learning experience. They also use gutta percha which requires only a main cone instead of a million little accessory cones.

We have tried to make the most out of our Maine experience, despite the rainy weather and temperatures in the 60s for the first two-three weeks. We visited Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain which are about an hour from here. We also went to Bar Harbor, a small waterfront town and a popular vacation spot. A few of us hiked on Dorr Mountain which is in Acadia.

Boston is less than four hours away and a great weekend trip, although it wasn’t a good ideaR to drive there because it was difficult to pahk the cah in the city without going broke. Anyway, the weather was warm and I had a wicked good time walking along the Charles River, sightseeing and trying some great food on Newbury Street, which is a mix of historic houses, shops and restaurants. Mike’s Pastry is a popular place in Boston’s Little Italy for cannoli and other Italian desserts so we made a stop there to overdose on sugar. Boston is a very nice, walkable city with a lot of history.

Georgi