Dental Hygiene Clinic Gets a Facelift

The Clark College Dental Hygiene clinic is open for business again.

Thanks to nearly $3.3 million in donations from a variety of entities—including the Firstenburg Foundation, Roy and Virginia Andersen Endowment, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, John A. and Helen M. Cartales Foundation and many others—renovations to the clinic space that began in September are mostly finished and students are once again practicing their skills in a real clinical setting.

“Students are working 12-hour days to catch up for missing time in the clinic from last quarter,” said Brenda Walstead, director of Dental Hygiene.

The upgrades were necessary in order for Clark to keep pace with the demand for workforce readiness and federal patient privacy rules in the dental hygiene field.

The Firstenburg Family Dental Hygiene Education and Care Center allows for more students to enroll and more patients—particularly under-served adults and children—to access care.

Still under construction is the lobby and heat recovery system, which are expected to be completed in the spring, according to Charles Worek, construction project manager.

A digital radiology suite, complete with digital x-ray capabilities, is anticipated to be fully functional by March. Furthermore, a new paperless patient charting system, called axiUm, is expected to go live in July, said Walstead.

The Firstenburg Family Dental Hygiene Education and Care Center is expected to be fully operational in late 2014.