Patient Care in the Community
Min Lynn (SDM’10) and Stefanie Sunnes (SDM’10) spread the word about dental health
Textbooks and mannequins can offer only so much insight into patient care. So students at BU’s Goldman School of Dental Medicine often are happy to gain hands-on experience with community service.
Fortunately, the division of community health programs provides plenty of opportunities throughout the year.
“For the first two years of dental school you don’t get that patient interaction,” says Stefanie Sunnes (SDM’10). “This way, you actually get to work with and teach actual people and not just mannequins.”
Sunnes says that she and Min Lynn (SDM’10) heard about the outreach programs through an e-mail from Kathy Lituri, SDM’s oral health promotion coordinator.
Lynn and Sunnes have taken advantage of every opportunity to teach people, from kindergartners to diabetes patients, about brushing and flossing — and about the dental services available at the school’s Patient Care Center.
In August, they volunteered for Operation Stand Down, which provides free health screenings and other services to homeless veterans.
“People don’t always know that they can get dental care,” says Lynn. “So with the community service projects, we give them information about where they can get free health care and tell them the dental school accepts MassHealth.”
“This is a way to not only help out in the community and get to know the people in the Boston area, but also to find out how to interact with patients,” he says.
Kimberly Cornuelle can be reached at kcornuel@bu.edu.
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