Patients at the Montezuma Creek Dental Clinic are rarely referred elsewhere because it is the only dental clinic around, giving graduates in the U’s Dental Residency Program the perfect place to refine their skills.
Dental residents travel to the clinic near Four Corners and offer professional dentistry services to people who have little opportunity to receive dental work anywhere else.
“Medicaid patients have a hard time being seen by a regular dentist because the reimbursement rate is so low that many dentists can’t afford to see them,” said Craige Olson, director of the program.
Residents also work at the Greenwood Dental Clinic in Midvale and at the U Hospital’s dental clinic. “We provide care for some of the people who can’t get care anywhere else.”
Olson said the program also gives residents a chance to work with patients facing serious medical debilitation.
“They get a feel for what it’s like to work for a really remote location,” said Joseph Vreeken, a dentist at Montezuma Creek, which is on the Navajo reservation near Four Corners area. “I don’t know if you can get any further south and still be in Utah.”
Vreeken said the residents rarely run into problems performing dentistry on the underserved community that uses the clinic because they have already graduated from dental school.
Travis Hickok, a graduate of the U’s dental residency program, returned from a full month working at Montezuma Creek. Hickok said he is one of 10 residents in the program, which has been at the U for about 28 years, to get extra experience in the field before starting his own private practice.
Hickok started his residency in July and will finish next June, when new residents will be admitted. He said the most challenging part is the demanding schedule he has to keep.
“We keep them running,” Olson said.
In addition to doing work at Montezuma Creek, residents also gain experience with underserved communities by working at Northwest Community Health Center in Salt Lake City. Olson said it is important for residents to work with diverse populations, because in the field, patients will come to them with a broad range of dental problems.
Aside from learning about cultural differences, residents also focus on pain management, oral hygiene and working with low-income patients at the community clinics, Olson said.
Most dentists who finish the residency program realize the true value of it two or three years later, said G. Lynn Powell, assistant dean for dental education at the U. Most of the students are recent graduates, and only a few had already established themselves in the field.
Hickok said he has practiced being sensitive toward cultural beliefs in the program, such as speaking to a husband rather than a wife in patriarchal cultures or being respectful of those who prefer to spit into a napkin rather than having him use a dental suction device.
“In dental school they kind of just get you ready to be a safe provider and they don’t really help you with all the complex cases you might see,” Hickok said. “You get more exposure to all the different areas of dentistry.”
Students in the U’s dental program stay at the U for their first year. For the following three years, they attend classes at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. Powell acknowledged discussion of a dental school being created at the U but said he could not comment on it because the idea is still under evaluation.
Nick AndrewTravis Hickok, a dental grad student, works on a patient at the dental clinic in the school of medicine. Hickok was a participant in the U?s Dental Residence Program and worked in the Montezuma Creek Dental Clinic.