Australasian Dentist Issue 92

CATEGORY 132 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST Healing Smiles is a direct response to the increasing crisis of domestic violence, abuse and suffering of women in the community. Often hidden, crossing all socio-economic sectors, age groups and devastating to our communities, abuse is a sleeping giant in the medical sector. The team, a subcommittee of ADAWA, harnesses the dental profession’s unique opportunity to serve around this issue, and aims to educate and inspire others to get involved across the nations. Jade Richardson talks to Clinical Coordinator, Dr Jacinta Wu, about how healing smiles has deepened her love for dentistry and inspired her creative life. T here’s an intimacy in dentistry that is rare in all of medicine. Australasian dentists invest heavily in client wellbeing – it’s woven into our architecture, business names, marketing and the environments we create from shop front to care in the chair. It’s this attention to intimacy, and the profession’s unique insight to the emotional, psychological and sometimes complex worlds of patients that makes dentistry, of all fields of medicine, a leader in valuing nurture, safety and comfort, as well as clinical precision and efficiency. Safe hands in troubled times Inspiring dentists restore hurt smiles and rebuild lives through kindness in medicine Rippling gently out across Western Australia, and receiving enthusiastic support from government in 2022, a team of dentists are taking this a step further. Initially the brainchild of Dr Gosia Barley, former President of the Women in Dentistry Society WA, Perth-based Healing Smiles was created to encourage and direct the generosity behind many dentist’s love for their work, and take that out to women in trauma from family violence. “We believe that restoring a smile may in fact restore a victim’s dignity, confidence and ability to move forwards in their lives, which is why Healing Smiles was created,” reads the organisation’s website. “The entrenched economic effects of domestic violencearewell documentedandendemic, with many survivors experiencing not just immediate dental trauma, but ongoing oral health problems related to the lack of dental treatment.” It’s the truth of this, and the immense rewards of making this difference, that Dr Vu says have inspired her professional dedication, and awakened her creative life as well. Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons [JV1] , the International College of Dentists, the Pierre Fauchard Academy and Academy Dentistry International, Dr Wu is immediate past president of the Women in Dentistry Society (WA) and a leading light at Healing Smiles where she oversees the flowering, “of a real wish and need among the Women in Dentistry Society (WA), to help women in the community.” And help is very much in need. “Many dentists are very, very good at making patients feel comfortable,” says Dr Vu, “but there are growing numbers, alarming numbers, of people whose anxiety goes beyond just a dental phobia. It’s these people we want to extend more heart and soul to, as well as ensure access to our professional skillset.” “In my own professional life, increasingly, I see evidence of this issue in patients I come across,” she says. I’ve been in clinical situations where I am aware that my patient is having a direct experience of trauma. I’ve seen it in their demeaner and other tell-tale signs. I’ve seen it in stress-related oral issues, overall ill-health and depression, and I’ve seen it at the other extreme too: treating trauma to face and damage to teeth that has come from physical violence. “I’ve also seen the impacts of coercive control; women who haven’t been allowed out of their homes to have regular medical COLUMNISTS Dr Jacinta Wu