Clinic Rep- Bagels and Insights

As a D3, the majority of my day is spent in clinic (rather than in lecture), which is a nice change from the first two years of dental school. By and large being in clinic is an incredible time of learning- developing clinical, laboratory, and interpersonal skills: all very relevant to what I’ll be doing on a daily basis in the future.  Working in the school clinics, however, is drastically different than working in a private practice.  After all, there can be up to 36 students (dental and hygiene) and about 6-7 instructors working in each clinic at one time.  And there are 4 clinics.  That’s a lot of dentistry!

Needless to say organizing all that activity can be a challenge.  Recently there have been some changes to the way the clinics are run.  Last spring we began moving closer to an electronic record, and we continue to introduce more and more features to achieve that endeavor.  Throughout the year we’ve gone through a few incarnations of organizing the various disciplines (prosthodontics, periodontics, general dentistry, and hygiene).  And other, smaller adjustments and changes are always arising.  With all that change also comes a lot of challenges, criticism, complaints, and hopefully solutions.

To facilitate that we have a group of students who meet each week with some of the “powers that be”.  Dental and hygiene students representing each class and clinic meet once per month with the Dean for Patient Services, a Clinic Director, a Clinic Department Associate, and recently an Information Technology Director has joined as well.  These meetings are very productive, addressing concerns of the students and proposing changes and solutions to the issues that arise.  It is nice to know that the higher-ups actually want to hear what we, as students, have to say, and that they actually do things to address our concerns.  I’ve been serving on this committee since my D2 year and it has been an awesome way of staying connected to the school and to my classmates.

Hillary Mendillo enjoys waking up early to be at school at 7:15 the second Wednesday of each month.  She also enjoy the bagels offered at the meetings.  This is why she is running for her current position as 3Green clinic rep.

More importantly, she enjoys representing the opinions/suggestions/criticisms of how things run in clinic.