REFLECTIONS

Lessons learned

From attending this cultural immersion trip, I gained valuable insight on how to conduct myself as a future student in dental school, and an eventual dental professional. I learned that all persons despite their circumstances are worthy of exceptional dental care, and all patients need to be treated equally. I gained perspective into how I can teach others of the importance of oral care by sharing the circumstances and cases I was able to observed in the 4 corners area. I will be able to teach those oral health practices in a future practice of my own. Although my experiences from this trip apply mainly to future leadership roles later in my life, I determined that my leadership styles are based on listening and obtaining input from my peers to make informed decisions or ideas. This was discovered as I took time to ask my peer students their opinions and observations they gathered while shadowing in these rural clinics.

Although my lack of education and certification prevented me from performing or assisting in the direct treatment of patients, I was able to pleasantly interact with patients through simple conversation to make them feel welcomed and at ease as they were being treated in an unfamiliar and perhaps feared location. Although it was a small difference made in their lives, it was the basis for what I will continue to do throughout my career as a dental professional.

Future plans

A key skill or task that greatly impacted me from this project was writing down and logging my daily experiences. Before this project, I did not know the benefit of writing down daily experiences that I consider important until I was completing my dental application and used my daily trip journal to remember a particular experience that happened in Montezuma Creek. Had I not written this information down, a key lesson I learned would have been lost. In my future projects, daily logs and journals will be kept to ensure all relevant information is recorded and accounted for.