Above: Dean Dr. Ben Davis presents the NSDA Prize for the greatest proficiency in anatomy to Annika Nobbe (DDS2). Photos by Bruce Bottomley
On November 19, more than 60 student awards were presented at Dalhousie’s 2024 Academic Awards Celebration, with faculty, staff, and several donors or their representatives in attendance.
The awards are presented each year to students in both dental hygiene and dentistry for academic achievement, proficiency in specific subjects, professionalism, compassionate patient care, leadership, volunteering, and community involvement.
The annual ceremony is special for the Faculty of Dentistry, says Dean Dr. Ben Davis, because it’s an “opportunity to celebrate exceptional student achievement and thank donors for their support.”
Several new awards were given out this year, says Dr. Fran Tompkins, Associate Dean of Students.
“This means we can recognize and support more students,” she explains. “Equally important, more donors are interested in working with us to support our students.”
Among those in attendance were Marc and Nick Thoms, who travelled from Newfoundland to present the Dr. Maureen Lawton and Class of ’82 Memorial Scholarship, and Isabel and Lynn Fergusson, who presented the Dr. Bruce N. Fergusson Memorial Award.
From within the Dalhousie Faculty, Dr. Cynthia Andrews presented the Dr. Noel H. Andrews Memorial Scholarship, Dr. Rick Raftus presented the Dr. Eric Hatfield Memorial Award, and Dr. Leigha Rock presented the Highest Academic Achievement in Dental Hygiene Award and the Lisa Van Alphen Memorial Award.
Grateful students
Two of this year’s recipients shared what the awards mean to them. Grace Heukshorst (DDS3) says, “Receiving these awards is a humbling experience because it reminds me of the hard work, support, and dedication that surround us all in this field.” She is also moved by the encouragement provided by professors, colleagues, and mentors “who believe in us even when we struggle to believe in ourselves”.
David Okunola (DDH2) is grateful to the donors, professors, and loved ones who have “always supported and guided us on our journey to becoming professionals in the dental field.”
Both students spoke of the bond between classmates and the support they give each other.
“I know the experiences and memories we’ve created will stay with us forever,” Okunola says. “We didn’t just achieve this milestone — we did it together.”
Left to right: Rylan d’Entremont (DDS3), Hayden Black (DDS3), Taylor Chaput (DDS4), Annika Nobbe (DDS2), Jade Ley (DDS3), Joshua Hayden (DDS2), Nir El (DDS2), Christy-Bel Moussa (DDH2), Vidhi Shetty (DDS4), and Kendra Cleary (DDS3).
Haider Hussain’s (MPerio’24) first experience of Canada was from the window of a quarantine hotel. It was May 2021, and he had arrived from the United Kingdom to take up his place on the master of periodontics program at Dalhousie University.
He was undaunted. “I like an adventure,” he says.
On the move
Hussain’s adventures began long before he reached Canada. He and his family moved from Saddam Hussain’s Iraq to the U.K. when Hussain was in his early teens. The move was “challenging,” he says, forcing him to grow up before his time.
The family settled in Leeds, West Yorkshire, which offered Hussain’s parents — both engineers — work opportunities in a multicultural city.
Many of Hussain’s family members are doctors and dentists, so when he was deciding what to study at university, health care was a clear choice. At school, he was able to get a few weeks’ work experience in a couple of dental practices. He gained similar experience in a GP’s medical practice, but didn’t find it as engaging.
“With dentistry you’re doing lots of things with your hands and being artistic,” Hussain explains. “You’re managing patients and staff, and there’s also a giving-back aspect to it.”
In the U.K., students can study dentistry straight out of high school. And, so, in 2006, Hussain began his five-year dentistry training at the University of Manchester, followed by a compulsory foundation year, which is a salaried position during which new dentists work under supervision.
Only a certain number of practices offer foundation-year placements, and Hussain’s was in a high-needs area near Sheffield. He treated patients needing multiple restorations, extractions, and full mouth rehabilitation, and gained an appreciation for “delivering dental care centred on disease prevention.”
After foundation year, Hussain needed a job. Like other junior dentists in the U.K., he worked for the National Health Service (NHS). He gained more experience and built up his speed, but in many ways, the work wasn’t satisfying enough.
“I understood the need to be fast, but I also wanted to give patients a good experience and for them to want to come back,” Hussain says. “I knew then that I wanted go into private dentistry.”
The road to periodontics
Hussain registered for a 15-day restorative certificate course at the Manchester Dental Education Centre, which he took over the course of a year while continuing to work. It was, he says, a “crash course on all the specialities.”
The course opened the door to periodontics. Hussain was intrigued and attracted to both the aesthetic and surgical aspects of the speciality, and procedures such as crown lengthening and gum and bone grafts. He explored part-time programs that would give him skills and knowledge in more advanced periodontal treatment. A three-year masters in clinical periodontology at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston was the result.
Although combining his practice commitments with his studies and travelling to back and forth to Preston was hard, Hussain says the masters program ignited his passion for periodontics. “There were lots of non-surgical treatments,” he says. “I was also able to do some surgeries, including guided tissue regeneration around implants, plus practising on pig jaws, treating patients, and a dissertation in third year.”
Hussain’s first masters was an introduction to the speciality, but it didn’t make him a specialist. That was why he came to Dalhousie to do a second one. He explored options in the U.K. and other countries, but Dr. Matthew Morris (MPerio’23), whom he met during his first masters and who was already in the Dal program, encouraged him to come to Halifax.
Ready for Dal
The interview for the Dal residency took place over Zoom because of COVID restrictions, denying Hussain an opportunity to visit campus.
“I was really impressed by the questions and by how chilled and relaxed the interviewers were,” he says.
Hussain was also given a lot of information about the program and the types of procedures he would be doing, including gum grafts using multiple techniques. He says it was a “lightbulb moment” when he recognized the scope for soft tissue grafting and the “artistic side of perio” a North American program would offer him.
He was not disappointed. “Dal offers a true speciality training program,” he says. “You’re not only being tested on your skills; you’re also being tested on the way you look for knowledge and gain that knowledge. I think this is what sets it apart from other programs.”
Hussain was ready for a program like this.
“I wanted to be a specialist,” he says. “I wanted an adventure. If that meant a new culture, a new place, new ideas, and working in a new country, I thought it would be stupid not to take that perfect opportunity.”
For Hussain, the adventure is not over. After his board exam, he will be volunteering with Crisis Management Association (crisismanagementassociation.com) at a refugee camp on Lesbos, a Greek island, where around 6,000 refugees from Syria, Yemen, and Somalia wait for their paperwork to be processed.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he explains. “I’ve done some volunteering and I like the idea of giving back and meeting like-minded people.”
After some time at home in the U.K., Hussain plans to return to Nova Scotia.
Mariam El-Aghil (BSc’18, DDS’24) says there wasn’t a single defining moment that convinced her to become a dentist, but that growing up during the civil war in Yemen played a big part. Her experiences in her home country not only inspired her to become a health care professional, but also opened her eyes to the struggles of underserved populations. As a practising dentist, she aims to help these populations with their oral health.
A new life in Canada
El-Aghil left Yemen in 2013. She was 16, had completed high school, and arrived in Halifax to join her two older brothers and go to university. Her parents and sister remained in Yemen.
It was a new country, a new culture, and a new education system, but it offered a safer future than the country she had left behind, where bombs and bullets disrupted both her school and home life. She says she would often study wearing a headlamp when there was no electricity.
El-Aghil landed in Canada as an immigrant, but by the time her sister arrived in 2016, the situation was worse in Yemen and there was no going back. They both successfully applied for refugee status and became Canadian citizens. Their parents arrived in Canada in 2021 after moving between Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey.
The making of a dentist
El-Aghil’s first step to becoming a dentist was completing Dalhousie’s honours program in microbiology and immunology. She worked as a teaching assistant and tutor and discovered a love of teaching. “I definitely hope it will be part of my future,” she says.
Before El-Aghil arrived in Canada, she already had ambitions to help relieve the hardships of underserved populations. “In high school, I co-founded a non-profit organization in Yemen to distribute basic life necessities to around 250 people in the first year, and 500 people in the second year, after the war started,” she says. During her undergrad years at Dalhousie, she volunteered as a coordinator for the annual Terry Fox Run.
In dental school, El-Aghil’s focus shifted to the Government Assisted Populations (GAP) outreach clinic, where she worked as a language interpreter and eventually became volunteer coordinator. This clinic provides oral health care to new immigrants and refugees at no charge to the patient. She was also vice-president of her class and a member of the EDIA committee.
“Canada opened up its arms to me when I came here,” says El-Aghil, explaining her drive to give back to the community. “I wanted to pursue health care so that I could help underserved populations and enable them to have better oral health care.”
A special opportunity
During her fourth year of dental school, El-Aghil’s interest in outreach took an interesting turn. The Faculty of Dentistry invited applications from students who were interested in attending the Student Diversity and Leadership Program at the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) conference in New Orleans in March 2024. The theme was emergency preparedness and underrepresented populations. El-Aghil was the successful applicant.
For two full days, she and other students from the U.S. and Canada discussed different types of emergencies and how to prepare for them. They also worked on group projects. What El-Aghil found particularly interesting were the types of emergency preparedness training students from other places received at their dental schools, such as how to deal with mass shootings.
A major take-away for El-Aghil was the concept of providing mobile dentistry in the event of an emergency — using a bus equipped with dental equipment, for example. “I thought this idea could be useful as part of outreach as well as during emergencies,” she says.
What next?
To boost her capacity to provide more complex treatment and outreach, El-Aghil successfully applied to do a general practice residency (GPR) in the Faculty of Dentistry. The plan to do the GPR grew out of the dental public health elective El-Aghil has been taking this year.
In doing this course, she saw more complicated cases, including patients with more comorbidities and mental health issues. “I felt I needed additional training in handling patient emergencies to be equipped to manage the needs of the populations I want to care for,” she explains.
El-Aghil plans to continue to act as the volunteer coordinator in the GAP clinic while she does her GPR. After that, it’s a blank map, but she hopes to stay in Atlantic Canada and possibly find position in rural Newfoundland.
Looking back on her decisions and educational path so far, El-Aghil says she considered studying medicine instead of dentistry. Ultimately, though, she chose dentistry because oral health care is not a priority in Yemen. Visits to the dentist usually only take place when there is a problem, such as a toothache.
“I wanted to do something that wasn’t common back in my home country in the hope that I can help people who are coming to Canada,” she says. “I want to help them develop better oral health care and provide more advocacy for them. That was why I chose dentistry in the end. It was an easy decision.”
Mariam El-Aghil’s sister, Mawada El-Aghil, graduated from the Faculty of Medicine on May 28, 2024.
At the beginning of 2023, Bryan Fader took the bold step of accepting a newly created position of student success strategist in Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Dentistry.
Though Fader, with his background in sports performance coaching, might not appear an obvious fit for the role, the truth is that an oral health professional student and a high-performance athlete have more in common than one might think. Now a year in, Fader feels some significant breakthroughs have been achieved.
A meeting of minds
It started with a chance encounter in a Halifax supermarket. Fader ran into his friend Dr. Sachin Seth, the associate dean of student affairs in the Faculty of Dentistry, and they exchanged news. Fader said that he was finishing off some qualifications for a master’s degree in counselling and psychotherapy. This gave Seth an idea, which then turned into a job offer: Fader would teach some classes and also offer individual counselling sessions.
For Seth, it made sense. “Student success rarely occurs in a vacuum — it is closely linked with mental and physical well-being,” he explains. “We asked Bryan to help students deal with any personal issues that could affect their academic journey and provide strategies to help them be more resilient and better able to cope when life gets a bit rough.”
Fader quickly saw the similarities between his new students and the athletes he was used to coaching. “They’re all high achievers,” he says. “They’re highly driven, they’re intrinsically motivated, they’re used to challenges, and they all feel a pressure to perform.”
Surprisingly, he also discovered that each student felt they were the only one with these feelings, and this was because they hadn’t had opportunities to talk openly together as a group. Fader changed this by bringing them together in larger class groups — a safe space where what they said was confidential, and where conversations about worries and fears could take place. What the students learned, he says, was that they were all experiencing similar doubts and generally “feeling they’re not doing as well as they’re doing.”
Strategies for building strength
A technique Fader recommends for people struggling with anxiety is “horizon vision.” A feeling of stress, he explains, tends to speed things up.
“The more we drop our heads down, the faster the world gets because we’re seeing it more closely.”
While the technique originates in treatment of anxiety in general, Fader has also used it to help athletes. “It’s useful for any kind of performance,” he explains.
Fader also encourages students to understand how stress is felt in their bodies. “People often make the mistake of fixing the challenges they’re experiencing in their head with other thoughts in their head, rather than fixing their bodies,” he says. “That’s why [the way] we hold ourselves and our breathing matters so much. It helps us to slow down before we get into flight mode.”
An expression Fader says he uses a lot is, “how you do something is how you do everything.” This is another technique he encourages students to adopt. “When does the patient experience start?” he asks his students. Fader maintains that preparing to see a patient involves preparation, rather than waiting until they are in the dental chair.
“With difficult conversations, challenges, feeling overwhelmed, and seeing a patient, if you practice how you want to be, when the moment comes, you’re way more ready,” he says. “It’s much better than trying to pull yourself up in the minute before something happens.”
One of the important pillars he shares with students is the concept of desirable difficulty. “When I pitched this concept to the class, one guy said, ‘Dude, we have enough difficulty. We don’t want any more.’”
While Fader acknowledges this response is understandable, he affirms that when you push yourself, even in a small way, you build a muscle.
“Think about going to the gym,” he says. “The weights shouldn’t be lighter. The students need to get stronger.”
His role, he maintains, is to help the students realize they are stronger than they think, and to provide the tools and strategies to harness that strength.
Becoming comfortable with discomfort
Getting into dental school is not easy, so why do such high-achieving students suffer so much from imposter syndrome and anxiety? It turns out their high level of achievement is precisely the problem.
“These students have been the best in their class up until they started dental school,” Fader says. “For them, getting an 80 rather than a 90 counts as failure.”
Allied to that, Fader maintains that students experience an identity crisis as they transition from being undergrads to becoming oral healthcare students. They have to “let go of one rope in order to grab the next one,” he says, and that makes them feel uncomfortable.
“I try to normalize that sense of discomfort so the students don’t feel that something is wrong,” he continues. “Their role is changing, and they will feel discomfort as they progress from rope to rope.”
In the year he has spent in the Faculty of Dentistry, Fader has worked with students in both the classroom and one-on-one in his office. He believes students are realizing they are stronger than they thought and can rise above their feelings of stress and anxiety when they are under pressure.
Looking ahead, Fader says that he wants students to know they don’t have to be in crisis mode to reach out to him.
“Therapy tools are life tools,” he says. “The more we can work together to strengthen students’ abilities to handle stress — and even welcome it — the deeper their life satisfaction will be and the more prepared they will be for what the future brings.”
Fader also runs monthly professional development sessions for staff and faculty. In the future, he hopes to attend conferences so he can help professional dentists better understand graduates, including their strengths and the generational differences. This will help practice owners know what to expect when they hire a new dentist and make them better able to integrate them into the practice.
Bryan Fader, student success strategist at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Dentistry. Photo by Bruce Bottomley
Above: From left, Dr. Ferne Kraglund, Jared Lush, Cecilia Keith, Jillian Bishop, and Mohammed (Mo) Alabdoulsalam. Photos by Nick Pearce
They may have come for the pizza, but they appreciated what they learned, too.
More than 40 DDS1 and DDS2 students gathered in Dalhousie Dentistry’s Room 3156 early in the evening of November 1 to hear a panel of four DDS4 students tackle their questions, ranging from “what did you wish you had known in first year?” to “when did you feel like dentistry was right for you?” to “what’s your sleep schedule like?” The event was part of the Oral Health Professional series, taking place this year in the Faculty of Dentistry.
The four panelists were Mohammed (Mo) Alabdoulsalam, Jillian Bishop, Cecilia Keith, and Jared Lush. Dr. Ferne Kraglund, associate dean of students, moderated the event.
‘What do you wish you knew in first year?’
The first question asked was, “What do you wish you had known in first year?”
Don’t try to be perfect was Mo’s advice. “Put the effort in and you’ll find it works out, but don’t get too caught up in the small stuff,” he says. “Keep your notes organized and think ahead about what you’ll need for your board exams.”
In a similar vein, Jared pointed out that dentistry students are used to being high achievers, and that dealing with criticism can be difficult.
“You might feel beaten down by the critical feedback you receive, but the important thing is to learn from it and be positive,” he says, adding that dental school is an accumulation of knowledge. “We’re studying for four years for the rest of our careers.”
Like Mo, Cecilia recommends keeping on top of notes. When you have 10 exams in two weeks, she says, you need your notes to be in good order.
Jillian suggests students come to clinic. “We always need people to help and it’s a great way to learn by watching,” she says.
Co-operation rather than competition
The senior students also talked about the importance of not being competitive and helping each other by sharing lecture notes and tips they picked up. “Karma in, karma out,” agrees Dr. Kraglund, and Jillian adds that the small group practice model was introduced to get everyone familiar with working with one another — not competing.
When it came to dealing with stress and pressure, Cecilia recommends DDS1 and DDS2 students enjoy their summers while they can. The other panelists suggest instructors and upper-year students are also there to help.
Jared says he tries to exercise after classes are finished for the day. “It makes me feel better and more energized when I sit down to work,” he says.
All four panelists recommend students prioritize getting enough sleep and outline their routines and habits.
Stressing the positives
Other topics covered were extracurricular activities, how to deal with failure, what to do during the summer breaks, and preparing to treat patients. Above all, though, the panelists stressed the positives: the success involved in being accepted to dental school, the opportunity to make life-long friends, the help and support of instructors and other students, and the satisfaction in giving back to classmates and the wider community.
Feedback from the DDS1 and DDS2 students after the event was encouraging. They felt the major topics of concern were addressed, and that the senior students were very open with them. They also enjoyed seeing the friendly interaction and connection between the four panelists.
One DDS1 student, Clay Smith, found the panel’s ability to empathize with first-year students’ current situation was “comforting and motivating.”
Without a doubt, he adds, “I would highly recommend this event!!”
By Cheryl Bell, Communications Manager, DAL Faculty of Dentistry
When Taylor Chaput heard she could take a seven-week clinic observation elective in the summer between the second and third year of her Doctor of Dentistry (DDS) program, she seized the opportunity with gusto.
Dentistry students at Dalhousie University typically spend the first two years of their program in the classroom and labs, learning the science and hand skills they will need before they meet their first patient. Everything changes in third year when students make the transition to clinical practice and begin treating patients in the Faculty of Dentistry clinic.
For Chaput, the opportunity to spend part of the summer gaining clinic experience by watching and assisting senior dentistry students as they treated patients made good sense.
“In dentistry school, we only have about two years where we do hands-on clinical work,” she says. “Our professors and instructors teach us as much as they can, but there will be things we have to learn on our own. I thought, ‘What greater opportunity to learn from other students and be exposed to patients I might not otherwise be exposed to.”
Putting learning into action
Chaput anticipated she’d be watching fourth-year students at work, soaking up information like a sponge. At most, she figured she might administer local anesthesia, which she had been taught to do.
It was better than that, though. In fact, she was able to do three fillings herself. Chaput admits she was nervous, but knew she was “in good hands.”
“You know, you have to start somewhere,” she says.
One of the fillings involved drilling out decay and discovering — as her professors had told her — that a real tooth is nothing like the plastic teeth she had practised on.
The other two restorations were on broken front teeth, which involved drilling, colour-matching, and shaping the material used to rebuild the tooth, as well as making sure the repaired tooth was comfortable for the patients — and that they were happy with the results.
“Seeing the before and after was a standout moment for me,” Chaput says. “I’ll definitely remember it later in my career. It went well, and I was proud of my work.”
In addition to the unexpected hands-on experience she gained, Chaput says she learned a lot about interacting with patients, particularly from Dr. Rick Raftus, one of the small group practice leaders. “He puts people at ease by being kind and just having normal conversations with them,” Chaput says.
Before doing the elective, Chaput says interacting with patients was one of the scariest aspects of going into third year.
“It means not just working on my typodont, which can’t talk to me, and not just taking notes on my laptop,” she explains. “We’re now putting what we learned into action, and that’s a big leap in our responsibilities.”
Would she recommend the summer observation elective to other students? Chaput says it was a “no brainer” for her.
“Dentistry is hard and you can’t just learn it from a book,” she says. “You have to learn it with your hands, through your peers, and from the people who have been doing it for years. This experience taught me that. It will definitely help me to become my best version of Dr. Taylor Chaput in the future.”
The story could have turned out very different differently, but Brown says that she and her dentistry student Wade Power (DDS’07) worked through the treatments together. “He improved my dental IQ and decreased my dental fear. And I just fell in love with this place,” she says with her big smile. That was in 2006.
The start of a beautiful – and very long – relationship
At the time, Brown was a psychology student at Dalhousie University, trying to decide between becoming a nurse or a psychologist. But her connection with Dal goes back much farther.
As a student at Highland Park Junior High, Brown was selected to attend a week-long math camp for African Nova Scotian kids, which gave her the opportunity to live on campus and attend classes.
“It opened my eyes to university and university life,” says Brown. “Nobody in my family had gone to university and I had no idea there was this world out there.”
Brown returned to campus in 2001 to take the Transition Year Program for African Nova Scotian and Indigenous students. “The idea is that it helps you bridge the gap between high school and university,” says Brown. “It was a deep dive into our history – who we are and why, and why education is so important. It was really great for me.”
Nearly four years later, Brown was reaching the end of her BSc in psychology when her trip to the Dalhousie Dental Clinic opened her eyes to the world of oral health. She began to take the prerequisites for the diploma in dental hygiene program and her application was successful.
The process may sound straightforward, but Brown was also caring for her young daughter, born was Brown was 18, and working in blood collection in the Dickson Building at the QEII Health Sciences Centre. “I’d work 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. and then run across to class in the Dentistry Building at 8:00.”
Brown says she loved dental hygiene and the feeling of belonging to a profession. But after graduating in 2009 and a year of practice, she came back to take the recently introduced bachelor of dental hygiene (BDH) degree program. “I wanted the degree – the full package,” she explains.
The BDH program exposed Brown to outreach clinics in schools and, most memorably, at Mount Hope Hospital where she cared for patients with mental diseases. Brown realized she wanted to help people who live in long-term care facilities.
The process of packing and unpacking instruments and supplies each week and travelling to the hospital gave Brown a solid foundation for her mobile dental hygiene business, which she launched in 2011, shortly after the dental hygiene profession became self-regulating.
Successful right out of the gates, she worked with United Way and travelled between clinics at schools and different special needs and youth groups. Brown operated her mobile business for nine years, until COVID-19 brought it to an end.
Exciting beyond what she imagined
By then, however, Brown was back at the Faculty of Dentistry. The initial spark Brown had felt when she first visited the Dalhousie Dental Clinic in 2006 had not gone away. “I loved dental hygiene, but part of me wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to do more for my patients.” Her mentor and role model, Dr. Barb Hamilton-Hinch, also encouraged her.
“I am ambitious,” she admits. “I enjoy achieving the impossible and being uncomfortable doing so. Becoming the first doctor in my family and starting a legacy for them is really important to me.”
With her daughter more independent, the time felt right. Brown assembled the credits she needed for dentistry and continued to operate her mobile clinic until she was accepted on her second application.
In 2019, Brown was back at Dal again as a first-year dentistry student. She was already familiar with hand skills and patient care, but the science involved in dentistry was a whole new world for her. “I was blown away by evidence-based medicine, the intricacy of the human body, and the link between the oral cavity and overall health.”
Working in the outreach clinic at the North End Community Health Centre was another highlight. “Most of the patients were people from my home community,” she says, “including some of the friends I grew up with.”
She also recalls the moment she delivered her first denture. “It’s so exciting to be able to give a patient new teeth and a smile,” she says. “After eight or nine appointments, you’ve built a relationship with them and you’re nervous and happy for this moment in their life.”
Brown loved the spirit and supportiveness of the class, too. “When I was in dental hygiene, the world was a different place,” she explains. “I was one of two black kids in my class. I felt really isolated.”
Fast forward nearly 20 years and her class is made up of students from a wide range of ethnicities and backgrounds. “I can’t imagine a better group of people. I never felt I was a part of something as much as I do now,” she says.
Now 43, Brown thinks her student years have come to an end. She’ll begin working at the Bible Hill Dental Clinic this summer, and she and some of her classmates plan to create a website to help students from minority backgrounds find the educational information and resources they need.
And, because she loves “this place” so much, Brown would love to return to Dal – again – to teach.
For Alero Boyo, convocation this year meant tying a bow on 17 years of university education. Her most recent degree, a combined Doctor of Medicine/Master of Science in Oral Maxillofacial Surgery from Dalhousie University, accounts for the final six years. The university accepts just one student into this program each year, so Boyo is the lone graduate for 2023 – and only the second female graduate from the program.
Back in 2006, when she was studying for her first degree at the University of Ottawa, Boyo didn’t dream of becoming an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, but she felt that a health sciences profession was in her future.
“I don’t think anyone knows where they’re going to end up, unless your plans are really focused,” says Boyo. “And sometimes you have plans and then your plans change.”
She explored both medicine and dentistry during her undergrad years as a medical science student, volunteering at a children’s hospital in Ottawa and a dental clinic for homeless and underprivileged people. But it was what she saw at the dental clinic – and the influence of a good mentor – that captured her interest.
Boyo’s next step surprised even her. “I decided rather late that I wanted to do dentistry,” she explains. “So even though I’d written the DAT exam, I had missed the deadlines to apply to the Canadian dental schools that cycle.”
So, “just to see”, she applied to dental schools in the UK and Ireland and was accepted at the School of Dental Science at Trinity College Dublin, a five-year program.
“It was a great decision, and it gave me a different life experience,” says Boyo, who enjoyed easy and inexpensive European travel while she was in Dublin, and the opportunity to make friends from many different places. The second term of her fourth year at dental school was spent as an Erasmus scholar on exchange in Stockholm, taking over the patient lists of a Swedish dental student who spent the term in Dublin treating Boyo’s patients.
A series of stepping stones
Dr. David Psutka, Boyo’s mentor from Toronto and an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, helped her think about her next step and encouraged her to consider specializing.
Although her interest in oral and maxillofacial surgery was growing, Boyo decided to spend a “stepping stone” year doing a general practice residency (GPR) at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
“In Canada, you don’t typically apply for oral and maxillofacial surgery right out of dental school,” Boyo explains. “A GPR gives you more hands-on exposure to complex cases, including oral surgery, so it helped me explore my options.”
There are just five English-speaking oral and maxillofacial surgery programs in Canada, so it’s competitive to get in. The first time she applied, Boyo was turned down. Although it was disappointing, Boyo decided to spend a second stepping stone year at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry where she pursued an oral surgery internship.
She explains that the role meant functioning as a first-year resident, helping out in the clinics, being on call, and assisting in the operating theatre. “It was great experience to get, whether you wanted to pursue oral surgery or add to your skills as a general dentist,” says Boyo. It also strengthened her applications to study oral and maxillofacial surgery the second time round.
In it for the long haul
Not surprisingly, Boyo says she had doubts and concerns before embarking on her six-year program at Dalhousie. “It’s hard work and a long commitment,” she admits.
But she likes that oral and maxillofacial surgery is a “bridge” between medicine and dentistry. She also says that it’s really rewarding professionally, particularly in terms of the kinds of difference an oral and maxillofacial surgeon can make in some patients’ lives.
The work ranges from caring for patients who have been in accidents or are receiving cancer treatment, to dealing with wisdom teeth or treating temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders. Boyo says she enjoys it all, even though a typical day begins at the hospital around 6:30 a.m. with rounds and doesn’t end until around 5:30 or 6 p.m. It’s not unusual to study for exams in the evenings, plus residents are typically on call one night a week and one weekend a month. It’s a real job combined with being a student.
Boyo may joke about going to law school next, but really, she is happy with the path she has taken to get where she is. Each of her stepping stones gave her an opportunity to explore her options and to learn and prepare for the next step.
And that included coming to Dalhousie. “It’s a strong program and well rounded,” says Boyo. Some other oral and maxillofacial surgery programs are only four years long, whereas Dal’s is six years and incorporates medical school as part of the program. “Did I enjoy all of it? Probably not, but it was all good learning,” Boyo admits.
This graduation is the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Boyo. Her six years in Halifax have convinced her that this is now home. She will start work at a private practice this summer and also hopes to have a role supervising and mentoring undergraduate students in the Faculty of Dentistry.
