Study Oral Health at Otago

Caitlin – 3rd year student:

I chose Oral Health because I really wanted to work in a health-related field. You don’t have to do health science to get into oral health, so for me it was awesome coming straight from school.

Brit – 2nd year student:

I thought it would be a lot of lectures and a lot of book work, but is so much hands-on work, which I really like. I thought it was going to be a lot easier, but it’s a lot of hard work.

Kim – 2nd year student:

You start your day at about 8:30 usually in the morning, and you have clinic and then lectures in the afternoon with tutorials. So yeah, there’s definitely always something that you need to be doing, or you know, something on the list of todos.

Deanna – Professional practice fellow:

So there’s different techniques that we use to actually get them to the point where they can confidently look in the mouth and be able to do the tasks that they need to be able to do by the time they get to second year.

Brydie – 2nd year student:

There's 40 of us and you get split into two groups, so there’ll be about 4 tutors per class. There’s always a tutor on hand and also the older years. We set up tutorials with them and they’re always willing to help us. They get to know us really well. There’s lots of activities.

Sam – Professional practice fellow:

A dental therapist is someone who works on children up to the age of 18 and they do things like fillings, extractions, exams, prevention. Whereas the dental hygienist works on any age.

Mitchell – 3rd year student:

So the dental hygiene scope we focus on prevention. We teach people good habits so they can improve their own oral health and reduce their chances of getting gum disease.

Caitlin – 3rd year student:

You provide them with preventative advice and changing their home care, and to see them putting those things into practice and doing that at home and noting an improvement is awesome.

Mitchell – 3rd year student:

The kids are pretty fun, so dental therapy scope is pretty awesome. It's rewarding seeing a kid come out happy at the end of an appointment thinking like, "oh, that wasn’t so bad".

Nina – 3rd year student:

I never really knew how to look after my teeth, and I was always that child that was screaming in the dental chair. and so I just thought, well if I want to give back to my community, this is one way that I could do it. So I could face my fears and go do something in my community but not also specific but in general.

Sarah – 3rd year student:

We have all the disciplines of Dentistry around us within the same building in the Dental School. So we don’t only learn about what we’re doing as oral health professionals but what the other scopes are practice within dentistry are doing as well.

Deanna – Professional practice fellow:

If you’ve got a drive and you’ve got a passion and you’re committed and you’ve got good communication skills, you can do our course.