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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.A group of eight grade students from Austintown Middle School visited the St. Elizabeth Dental Clinic on Jan. 6 to learn about different dentistry careers.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.One of the Austintown Middle School students practiced using tools on a pair of dentures during a .trip to the St. Elizabeth Dental Clinic on Jan. 6.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Austintown Middle School students learned from Dr. Amy Marie Nestor how to use different tools to perform different dentistry techniques.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.One of the Austintown Middle School students put on gloves, glasses and a face mask as she practiced using different tools on a pair of dentures on Jan. 6.
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Neighbors | Alexis Bartolomucci.Eighth grade students from Austintown Middle School learned about different dental techniques during their visit to the St. Elizabeth Dental Clinic on Jan. 6.
By ALEXIS BARTOLOMUCCI
Austintown Middle School eighth-grade students brushed up on their dentistry skills during their visit to the St. Elizabeth Dental Clinic on Jan. 6.
Students are selected by the school based on their interest in going into the career of dentistry and anywhere between 20 and 50 students are picked. Once a month, one school from either Trumbull or Mahoning County has the opportunity to send the selected students to the clinic for a few hours to learn about the different careers in dentistry as part of a community outreach program. The program is possible due to a grant through the Mahoning Valley hospital.
“We get high schoolers involved in seeking interest in the medical community,” said attending dentist Dr. Jenelle Fleagle. “We go through the different fields with them to see if they’d be interested in that.”
The students spend between one to two hours at St. Elizabeth exploring the mobile dental van and being able to have hands-on learning with the various dental tools. The students are separated into groups and visit each station the dentists have set up.
“We set up stations so they can rotate and actually feel the material and do blood pressure on each other. They learn how to set teeth, and wax the denture teeth and then see the mobile van,” said Fleagle.
There are two vans that are used for the St. Elizabeth mobile clinic that visits places from schools to nursing homes five to six days a week. The vans provide affordable dental work to those who don’t have dental insurance or may not be fortunate enough to visit the dentist regularly. There is no age limit and the dentists can perform procedures from a cleaning to extractions.
“I think it’s really interesting what they can do with it. Kids usually think dentistry is just looking at teeth and it’s so much more than that. Teeth are so important to the body that it’s a fascinating feature,” said eighth-grader Mia West.
This is the second year the dental clinic has done this program. The clinic has been happy with the success of the program and is hoping to keep it going for years to come.