The CRANAplus offices will be closed from midday Tuesday 24 December and will reopen on Thursday 2 January 2025. The CRANAplus Bush Support Line is available throughout the holidays and can be contacted at any time on 1800 805 391.

Dental Student on Wheels

21 Jul 2016

Traveling in the purpose-built dental van to provide services in aged care facilities in the Port Macquarie region was a highlight for Jessica Zachar, a Final Year Dentistry Student at Charles Sturt University, during her rural placement.

My time on the van was an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence dur­ing my four-week place­ment at the Mid North Coast Local Health Dis­trict (MNCLHD) in Port Mac­quar­ie. Hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide treat­ment to those who could not reg­u­lar­ly access a den­tist due to phys­i­cal and men­tal con­di­tions was both reward­ing and mem­o­rable. I saw a range of patients who had a vari­ety of needs such as relief of pain, gen­er­al checks up, extrac­tions, fill­ings and assess­ments for new dentures.

Trans­port is one of the biggest bar­ri­ers for the elder­ly in access­ing oral health ser­vices and the van bridges this gap by going to the aged care facil­i­ty itself. The half mil­lion-dol­lar pur­pose built den­tal van comes com­plete with a wheel­chair lift into the mobile surgery, a small wait­ing area suit­able for a car­er and stor­age area for equip­ment and instru­ments. As well as the wheel­chair lift for per­son­al chairs, it also has a reclin­able portable wheel chair for in-house visits. 

The van was com­mis­sioned by MNCLHD in part­ner­ship with the Cen­tre for Oral Health Strat­e­gy to pro­vide gen­er­al den­tal ser­vices to clients in such facil­i­ties. It began oper­at­ing in late 2012 and has since rotat­ed around the Mid North Coast region includ­ing Lau­ri­eton, Kempsey, Wool­go­ol­ga, Cam­den Haven, Coffs Har­bour and Port Macquarie. 

I can see that the den­tal van is a suc­cess­ful tool in address­ing oral health needs in region­al com­mu­ni­ties. I would like to see this ser­vice used in remote com­mu­ni­ties to close the gap in access to oral health services. 

The pub­lic clin­ic at the Com­mu­ni­ty Health Cam­pus has expand­ed in recent years with sev­en den­tal chairs cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing and as a result, has dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced the wait­ing list time for the local community. 

It wasn’t all work dur­ing my place­ment: I also had the chance to con­tin­ue study – and also play. Port Mac­quar­ie has a Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty (CSU) cam­pus in town. This allowed fel­low stu­dents and myself to video­con­fer­ence dur­ing lec­tures and tuto­ri­als based at the CSU Orange Cam­pus on Wednes­days. With such tech­nol­o­gy, CSU den­tal stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive sup­port and men­tor­ship dur­ing their final year of den­tistry while under­tak­ing a full year of place­ment in dif­fer­ent region­al towns such as Bathurst, Wag­ga Wag­ga, Albury, Dub­bo, Orange and Port Macquarie. 

Week­ends con­sist­ed of explor­ing the coast with activ­i­ties such as camel rid­ing at Light House Beach, jet ski­ing by the marine and vis­it­ing the Bago Vine­yard Maze. 

I would like to thank CRANAplus for their sup­port and in par­tic­u­lar Zeitz Enter­pris­es for spon­sor­ing me dur­ing this rur­al place­ment. I look for­ward to grad­u­at­ing this Decem­ber and start­ing my career in rur­al Aus­tralia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pub­lic health sec­tor and this place­ment has fur­ther rein­forced how much I love liv­ing and work­ing in region­al and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties of Aus­tralia such as this one. 

Jes­si­ca is cur­rent­ly a final year den­tistry stu­dent at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty. She was pre­vi­ous­ly the Pres­i­dent of the CSU Den­tal Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion and was the Rur­al Offi­cer of the Aus­tralian Den­tal Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion in 2014. She is also the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Nation­al Rur­al Health Lead­er­ship Award for her pas­sion, work and com­mit­ment towards clos­ing the gap in oral health for rur­al Australia