Appleton, WI Rotation

So this last week I spent 3 days at a community clinic up in Appleton, WI. This was my second away rotation this semester. It was another great learning experience similar to my rotation in Eau Claire last month. This clinic is a little different than the one in Eau Claire. First it is run completely of donations, and volunteer work by MUSoD students and volunteer dentists from the surrounding communities. There are around 90 local dentists that rotate through a volunteer schedule and each week the Dental school sends 2-4 students up for the week.

As in Eau Claire, we see a lot of emergency patients who come in because they are in pain. So naturally we would do a lot of extractions and endo type procedures. This week I was able to do a lot of extractions, which I enjoy greatly, but I was able to perform my first pulpectomy. A pulpectomy is basically half a root canal, you open up the tooth and clean out the pulp and the infected tissue, but then temporize it with a disinfecting solution inside and then reschedule the patient back in for the completion of the root canal. This is something done a lot in an emergency setting. It was quite a stressful experience for me, because it was my first time on a patient. I didn't have a lot of time and the doctor was not as available as I would have liked. Either way it turned out well and I learned something new and now I feel much more comfortable with the procedure.