State-of-the-art dentistry
Dentist's $150,000 gift made it possible for new suite to open debt free
Lynchburg News and Advance
Friday, January 12, 2007‘Brush up and back - make sure you get it really good.” “Just one more spot.”
“You have a chip.”
“This is a fluoride treatment.”
The sounds of dental office work drifted from the six new operatories in the Free Clinic of Central Virginia on Thursday morning, the second full day for the new Greg Sheehan Arthur Dental Suite.
About 35 patients were scheduled, all to be seen in the new downstairs offices accessible by stairs or by an elevator for people with mobility problems. Each new operatory has a wide entryway that a wheelchair won’t bump.
Thursday, the staff was mostly Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University dental school students and dental hygiene students working under the watchful eye of Lynchburg dentist Dr. Angelo Arthur.
Dr. Arthur’s gift of $150,000 in memory of his late wife made it possible for the suite to open debt free. Greg Arthur died in July 2006. The $300,000 expansion doubles the number of dental patients the Free Clinic will be able to see to probably around 4,000 in 2007. That figure includes the evening hours staffed by Lynchburg dentist-volunteers.
VCU students come to the clinic at 1016 Main St. 11 days a month - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for three weeks, and Thursday and Friday the fourth week.
They work hard.
Kristen Hurley, a fourth-year dental student, is in her second rotation through the Free Clinic. “I worked upstairs in June,” she said. In the new suite, “it is much nicer, there’s a lot more room, and you’re not bumping into patients in the hallway. I think the patients like it a lot more because it looks cleaner, it’s more spacious, the equipment is a lot better.”
The state-of-the-art equipment comes through a $100,000 gift through Centra Health. Area dentists and businesses donated another $50,000.
The patient population she sees in Richmond is more a mixture of patient needs than she’s seeing in Lynchburg.
“Here I would say they are more medically compromised than the patients we see at school - this is kind of like the patients we see in the emergency clinic at school.”Amy Mallady of Richmond and Amanda Adkins of Dinwiddie are both dental hygiene students.
Mallady said everything is well-organized at the Free Clinic of Central Virginia. And the new equipment is exactly what she uses at VCU.
Mallady said she’s worked with three different dentists who’ve been helpful and “all very nice … even when they’re rushed, they’re not in a hurry.”
Thursday’s mentor was Dr. Arthur, who has worked with the dental program since it began in the late 1980s with the clinic’s opening.
Why has he been so steadfast?
“I think that anyone in the medical or dental field with the kind of income that you make, the education you have, I just think it is necessary that you give back a certain percentage of your time and effort, whether to charity, or the Free Clinic, or treating patients in your office that are in need,” Arthur said.
“Everybody does not have access to dental care and medical care.”
In dental school, he said, students see patients who can pay very little for their care and have an array of problems.
But dental woes aren’t just limited to people who don’t have a regular dentist and little income.
“You see it throughout the whole strata, whether it be fear of going to the dentist, or not being educated towards good dental care when they were younger, whether it’s not a priority to spend resources for dental care - what ever the reason, you see lots of things like that.”
At the Free Clinic, the first priority must be emergency care and relief of pain, said Arthur. After that comes basic care including cleaning and oral hygiene instruction.
“Once they get to that point, it’s a matter of trying to restore the teeth that can be restored and then to remove the hopelessly involved ones and keep them on a good program of coming back regularly so they know what good dental care is.
“If they ever get to a better socio-economic situation, then they can go out into the community where there are other dentists and get better levels of dental care.”
Dr. Gus Petticolas and Dr. Bill Riley were the lead dentists working with VCU to use the Free Clinic as part of a rotation for senior students.
Arthur liked the idea from the start. “You get more hands treating patients - the kind of dentistry they do here is the nuts and bolts kind of dentistry the senior students can do under supervision.”
Dr. Arthur retired from his private practice in 2002 because Greg Arthur’s prognosis wasn’t good for the long term. He didn’t wait for retirement age, and he’s glad of that.
“We did a lot of things for about four years,” up until about six months before she died.
If there is poignancy in Dr. Arthur’s mentoring at the clinic, there is also the reward in seeing it work the way it is supposed to and for those whom it is designed to serve.
“It’s a beautiful place,” said Calvin Cox Sr., a Free Clinic patient who’d just completed his dental visit.
Cox doesn’t mind having students provide his dental care. “They’ve got to work with somebody,” he said. “I know they get the best of teaching.”
He has only good things to say about the new dental suite.
“It’s a big improvement for the city. I’m glad, glad, for the people who came forward - it means a whole lot.”
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