Expanded dental clinic helps seniors and disabled

A redeveloped and expanded dental clinic in Edmonton is helping both dental students and the chronically ill, elderly and mobility-challenged.

Renovations to Glenrose Dental Clinic have doubled the number of chairs in the facility, meaning more space for dentists to work on patients and more learning opportunities for dentistry and dental hygiene students.

The clinic is designed to treat the chronically ill, elderly and mobility challenged people.

“It’s probably not until you have an elderly parent or you have someone who has Alzheimer’s or autism or all those kinds of issues where you try to take them to regular dentist and they’re just not able to cope with the challenges to work with that particular person,” said Dr. Paul Major, the chair and lead of the School of Dentistry at the U of A.

Thanks to a $1.4 million fundraising campaign led by the University of Alberta School of Dentistry, the expanded clinic offers state of the art dental facilities and patient lifting equipment, to assist patients who require help getting from their wheelchairs to the dental chair.

“The entire clinic was built with donation dollars,” Major said.

The dental clinic is the only one of its kind in Alberta, said Major, and patients are ecstatic about the renovations.

“The patients that are coming there, they absolutely love it. It’s a bright, cheery environment,” he said.

Clean Teeth

    The dental clinic serves seniors, older adults with chronic conditions and individuals with disabilities
A partnership between the U of A School of Dentistry, Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation and Alberta Health Services has made the expanded clinic possible

This article is from http://metronews.ca