By Emilie Baerts
In summer 2019, Raj Aslam, Matt Hughes, Willow Boardman-Owen, Dr. Evgeny Kushnerev and I all went on the two-week summer exchange programme to the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine in Boston, USA. We had an absolutely fantastic time!
The first week consisted of a range of lectures where we learnt a lot about how the healthcare system differs between the UK and USA. We also learnt about how their dental school uses CAD-CAM technology to make crowns, dentures, inlays, onlays and surgical guides for implants.
During the second week of the exchange programme, we shadowed all the clinics in the school. It was very interesting to see how a private hospital runs in comparison to our NHS dental hospital.
The patient demographic was highly varied, so we were able to see a range of complex treatments being carried out on the various clinics. We even got the opportunity to use a 3D scanner to scan a crown prep into the Cerec machine, design the crown and mill it into an IPS EMAX block all in 2 hours.
This was fascinating to see as the students have the opportunity to use these machines whenever they need, so they can prep, design and deliver crowns to their patients all in one clinical session!
Our trip wasn’t all work and no play – we had a lot of fun with the exchange students who were all very welcoming. They showed us all around Boston – we went whale watching (first time I have ever seen whales in the wild!); went to see a baseball game in Fenway Park; had dinner with Dean Hutter in Boston University Castle; toured Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and visited many museums.
Before and after the exchange, we had the opportunity to do some travelling around America. We visited New York City for a week, and after Boston we travelled to San Francisco and went on a road trip to Yosemite National Park.
I would without a doubt recommend applying to this exchange programme – it was a really amazing experience and absolutely the highlight of the summer. As you can probably see from the photos below…
