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.”