Smiling Through COVID: Our New Face of Dentistry

COVID kept us out of school and solely on
Zoom from March to June. Between being
‘Zoom bombed’, dogs barking during
lectures and WiFi outages, we learned to
adapt. We’re one of the first dental schools
to be up and running, and things are looking
quite different…but safety first!

HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE
You’ll have trouble recognizing your UF
dental students now. We look like little
surgeons with all this PPE! Our operatories
are also enclosed and our classes have been
split in half— morning shift (Orange team)
and afternoon (blue team).

So far the clinic has been a little slow for me. We are paired with senior associates that need to reach
their graduation requirements (after being set behind three
months), so I’ve been doing more assisting than procedures as a
primary provider. However, I’ve accomplished my first SRP, first
filling, and even pulling my first tooth! Which let me say… is nothing
how I pictured it. In fact, there is very little PULLING involved. You
have to muscle up against that tooth and PUSH, creating slow
upward and side-to-side pressure. The ‘pulling’ teeth part might be a
little of a misnomer, but as the old saying suggests… it is hard! Some
smaller teeth might come out like a piece of cake, but trying to get
out a giant molar when you’re just over 5’ tall can get you sweating
through your scrubs. We joke that we don’t need to go to the gym
on days we have extractions because it’s that good of a workout. Besides getting to show off my
serious biceps, the ability to get a patient out of pain is probably why oral surgery feels so instantly
gratifying.