Musings from Paige and Mackenzie

The six clinic days at Entreamigos have been a challenging, but an eye opening experience. During this time we gained knowledge on how to work in an unfamiliar environment and learnt how to adapt quickly to our new surroundings. We were confronted by the consistent flow of difficult clients, which is much different compared to what we have encountered back home along with the challenging working conditions such as the heat and the individual dental unit set up. This was a challenge because we found it extremely exhausting to find ways for our bodies to work efficiently in this new setting without compromising our ergonomics, but many of us did. We also discovered that it takes a lot of heart and determination to build and run a pop-up clinic. We continued to discover creative uses of materials to put together a dental clinic; this included beach chairs for client chairs, child play chairs for operating chairs and a plastic tote as our working table. We quickly recognized how important it is to understand and demonstrate the basic fundamentals of dental hygiene practice. Overall, we appreciated how grateful the clients were and how well our dental hygiene team worked together. We are extremely appreciative of this experience we have a been given and are forever changed from the clinic days we experienced here in San Pancho.