A volunteer dental clinic run by students is making a huge difference to the people of an Aboriginal community in Queensland that doesn’t have a dentist.
For a group of final-year dental students at Queensland’s Griffith University, they were happy to spend their holiday time working at the Barambah Health Centre in Cherbourg last May. Here, they attended 123 patients and completed 380 procedures.
It’s become a regular trip for these committed dental students… and a lifeline for Cherbourg locals. The Aboriginal community town, located about 250km northwest of Brisbane, hasn’t had a regular dentist for years.
Many of the patients whom the dental students see are in chronic pain, including children as young as three with abscessed teeth. Working under the supervision of Dr Ed Khoury, from the Griffith University School of Dentistry, the 10 Hope4Health students performed a number of emergency procedures, including 71 extractions and 91 fillings and/or restorations.
The situation in Cherbourg highlights a lack of access to rural dental services, lengthy waiting lists for public dentistry, affordability issues with private dentistry and a greater need for preventative health education in rural communities.
“People are postponing dental treatment and leaving treatment too late, which means the disease progresses too far and leaves teeth unsalvageable,” says clinic organiser Ryan Goh, a final-year dentistry student at the university’s School of Dentistry on the Gold Coast.
Goh and nine fellow students drove to Cherbourg bringing dental equipment and fold-out chairs to convert the nurses’ rooms at the Barambah Health Centre into a temporary dental clinic for five days.
They worked from 8am to 5pm each day, using improvised cycling lights strapped to their heads, seeing a constant stream of patients. They then worked a further hour cleaning and sterilising instruments for the following day.
“The students are fantastic,” says Veronica Roderick, corporate services manager of Barambah. “We get so much feedback from clients who say the students are wonderful, very respectful of our community and great with the kids.
“We have people here who are in terrible pain. But you should see them smile after they leave,” says Roderick.
Cherbourg is Queensland’s third largest indigenous community. It hadn’t had access to a dentist for several years and the closest Queensland health dental clinic, an hour away, has a waiting list of more than two years.
This lack of access to dental treatment and oral health education has seen a significant increase in extensive decay, broken-down teeth and chronic dental problems. This has resulted in individuals suffering from chronic pain, difficulty eating and discomfort due to aesthetic problems.
To address this problem, representatives of Hope4Health established a volunteer dental clinic in conjunction with Barambah Regional Medical Service. Hope4Health is one of 29 university rural health clubs supported by Rural Health Workforce Australia through the National Rural Health Students Network. This is the fourth year it has been running the dental clinic.
In 2011, 1065 procedures were completed, which—according to 2009 Queensland Health costing—amounted to just under $80,000 worth of treatment.
Overall, the university rural health clubs aim not only to provide emergency treatment when visiting the Cherbourg community but also to raise dental awareness. All patients attending the clinic receive oral hygiene instruction, a toothbrush and toothpaste for prevention of further decay and maintenance of good oral hygiene.
“This service is extremely important to the community,” explains Veronica Roderick. Dental care goes hand in hand with control of chronic disease—if you can’t eat properly, that affects everything.
“Prevention is vital too. The students not only treat people but they also teach them how to look after their teeth and they also teach our clients how to look after their children’s teeth.”
Supervising dentist Dr Ed Khoury accompanied the students on their first visit and was there again in May.
“These students do a great job,” he says. “There’s a long wait for public dental services and if a patient has toothache, that’s a problem.
“Most of the treatment we’re doing here today is for pain. The best we can do for a lot of these patients is take the tooth out. We even have instances of three-year-old children with multiple cavities and tooth abscesses.”
Dr Khoury says the situation at Cherbourg highlights the need for better access to dental services throughout rural Australia. He knows of cases where farmers have removed teeth with pliers “because they’re in so much pain and there’s nowhere to go for dental care”.
To emphasise the point, Dr Khoury refers to one of the patients receiving treatment from the students.
“His upper teeth have decayed to the extent that they have broken off, and the decay has gone below the gum line. The lower teeth are also decayed and covered in calculus. The lower right wisdom tooth is mobile (loose) because of the calculus and has to be extracted. We see patients like this on a regular basis out here. It is common but it shouldn’t happen.”
