The Force Behind Advocacy

It has been quite an exciting journey as ADEA’s advocacy chair this year from learning the legislation in motion to participating in lobby days. However, being ADEA’s Advocacy Chair was definitely not the role I had in mind when I started dental school. During orientation, I was introduced to and intrigued by the presence of legislation and public policy that affected the way we learned and dictated how we practiced. I realized that I was a stranger to the legislation that surrounded dentistry. I knew then that I wanted to further understand dental advocacy and help introduce this knowledge to my classmates and colleagues.

During the winter quarter, I was able to collaborate with the National ADEA’s advocacy and government relations team to provide a legislation debriefing to UCSF students. The debriefing included legislation currently on the senate and house floors and bills that were being drafted for student debt relief and financial protection for providers. The team explained the process to which a bill is drafted and passed as well as the implications for us as students and future providers.

Additionally, I wanted to advocate for student learners during these difficult times by collaborating with SPEA to host a Q&A session with Dr. Perkins to address and discuss questions about how decreased sim-lab hours will affect clinic performance, CODA accreditation, and ethical concerns regarding allowing students who’ve had their practice hours decreased to practice in clinic. We wanted students to be able to voice their concerns and the Director of Pre-doctorate clinic AKA Dr. Perkins was open to hearing and addressing our concerns. Dr. Perkins provided great feedback and was sincere in her response to our concerns and addressed concerns regarding the transition from pre-clinic to clinic.

This past year amidst the Covid pandemic, our country showed its lack of infrastructure to protect those most vulnerable — both health-wise and financially. Advocacy is as important as ever. Dentists and medical professionals are voicing our concerns for legislation to control the exploitation of insurance policies and for the government to do their due diligence to protect the financial interest of average individuals during unprecedented time like today. Students and dentists have also continued to voice our concerns to our faculties and representatives to protect the prestige of our education, practices, and health of our patients. To continue to advocacy, I’m planning to attend Capitol Hill Day and continue to learn about the legislation in progress next quarter and hopefully share this information with my colleagues. Advocacy is often forgotten but pertinent to know so we can together understand what’s changing in our field of work and how can we better address these issues as professionals and as a university.

-Kenny Cho – Class of 2024

A Day in the Life of a D1 (Pandemic Edition)

9AM-12PM: I normally roll out of bed and log onto Zoom where in the morning we have Biomedical Science lectures. Right now, we are learning about microbiology and pharmacology. We get a lot of guest lecturers from different departments which makes lecture a bit more interesting and gives it more variety. It can be tiring watching Zoom lectures for 3 hours, but the professors are nice enough to give us a 10 minute break after each lecture. We also sometimes will have small group activities where we will work on an online quiz together.

12-12:30PM: I try to scarf down my lunch as soon as possible (which is normally leftovers from last night’s dinner) so I can change and hop onto the shuttle to go to clinic. I currently live in the Mission Bay campus which is a 20 minute shuttle ride away from the Parnassus campus which is where the dental clinics are. If I don’t have to go to campus, sometimes I will attend a virtual lunch and learn on Zoom. There are so many clubs that always have informative presentations and guest speakers including ADEA Road to Residency series!

1-4PM: On Friday afternoons, we have clinic where we are in groups of three and we have a different exercise each week. On this day, we were doing a plaque assessment using disclosing tablets. This is where the patient chews a bright pink tablet that stains the plaque on the teeth pink and the student provider would chart the plaque levels on the teeth. Then, the patient would brush and floss their teeth how they normally would and then the plaque levels would be measured again. The student provider will then give the patient proper techniques on brushing and flossing. I was a patient today so it was fun chewing the tablet and seeing which areas in my mouth I could brush better. Some things that we have to be a bit more cautious about during clinic due to COVID is to minimize the production of aerosols. So for this exercise, we were only permitted to use the water in the air/water syringe, but no water.

4-7:30PM: On this particular day, I had signed up for after hours in SIM lab because I had to work on our mounting project for crown and bridge. For this project, we did a crown prep on #30, then took an impression of it then mounted it. The most important part of mounting would be to make sure that the occlusion of the upper and lower arch are correct. Next quarter, we will be waxing #30. There was definitely a lot to learn when mounting, but the D2’s are always willing to help!

7:30-10PM: After taking the shuttle home, it is probably close to 8PM where I was finally able to relax and eat some dinner. I usually cook some stir fry veggies and tofu (trying to eat more plant based!) with some rice, making a quick and easy dinner. I watched some Netflix while eating and relax for the rest of the night. Today was particularly a busy day, but it is not always like this! There are also days where we only have class in the morning, or finish lab early so there are definitely other times where we have more time to chill and catch up on work. Even though COVID has impacted our D1 experience, I am still grateful to have such supportive classmates and know that we are all in this together!

-June Lee – Class of 2024