Louisville is actually, I think, the perfect place to practice dentistry because of how diverse it is. You will find any and everybody in Louisville, whether that's in the school or in the actual community of Louisville. You're going to see people from all over, all types of places, different incomes, different ethnicities. You'll see everybody.
Being in a medical campus is a blessing and a plus because most patients not only have a dental problem, they might have additional medical problems. So sometimes you need to refer the patient to a medical consult or for adding more information before providing the dental treatment.
I think that the demographic here is great to work with. My background is in public health, so coming in, I've always kind of had the approach of looking at the bigger picture and systemic health overall. And with dental school, this is a specialty in the healthcare field. So we have to always remind ourselves and keep that in the back of our heads, that we're not just working on the mouth, we're not just focusing on oral health, but just overall health.
I love the mission-based, the mission-minded philosophy of the School of Dentistry here.
I did have an opportunity to do two screening events during my program. One of them was in Churchill Downs, and that was really a great experience because most of the people there don't have a chance to see a dentist at all. I did one rotation outside the school. It was in Bowling Green, and it was a fantastic experience for me. Whenever you have a chance to treat a patient who's in pain and get this pain out, I think that's one of the most community needs.
I didn't really realize coming in that we would get to do stuff like that, but I'm so excited to get to go to different areas. We get to reach different people and see a different subset of population that we might not see here in the big city of Louisville. We get to kind of hone down and see some of these rural areas and really get to engage in different types of people.
I would love to be able to serve not only the community of Louisville, but throughout as well. And I think that's something that Louisville offers, and it really benefits us as a student body to be able to see rural Kentucky and then much outside of Louisville and have that patient diversity.
