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For more information on the dental clinic:
Phone: 937-339-8656
Online: www.miamicountydental.org
Anthony Besse said his quest to become a dentist was enhanced by the days he spent working and learning at the Miami County Dental Clinic.
Besse, who is from Cincinnati, last week was wrapping up both his days at the Ohio State University and his participation in the Oral Health Improvement Through Outreach, or O.H.I.O Project, through the OSU College of Dentistry.
The nonprofit county dental clinic, founded in 2008, serves low-income, uninsured, under-insured and state-assisted residents.
The clinic is based in a small office on West Main Street in Troy just a short distance from Interstate 75.
The organization might not have a lot of room for its clinic, but it gets a lot done, said Claire Timmer, Miami County Dental Clinic director.
In the O.H.I.O project dental students in their final year work 50 days at clinics across the state.
“We get a lot of experience. All of my classmates, too, we love these because we are getting so much more experience than at the clinic at school,” Besse said, “Here, we have more autonomy than at clinic. Here, we get to take our skills that we learned and use them in the real world. It really ups our pace, which is a big thing.”
The students are overseen by one of the clinic’s part-time dentists, who serve as adjunct professors at OSU.
Last week, Besse and James Smithson were working under the supervision of Victor Dubel, DDS. The other clinic dentists are Greg Gallagher and Lytha Miller
“It is very neat because they are surprisingly with it for students who haven’t come out of school yet. They are very capable, energetic. They jump right in there,” Dubel said.
In addition to the services the students provide, they also help the clinic keep as up to date as possible with their comments on procedures, and equipment in use, Timmer said.
The Miami County Dental Clinic also has a Traveling Smiles program. The clinic outreach program provides preventative and restorative dental care to insured, underinsured and low-income children in county schools in the school setting. Portable dental equipment has been used since 2013 by clinic staff and O.H.I.O Project student dentists to treat 1,148 school children across the county.
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