Advocating for special needs dentistry
By Rachel Boutet
When it comes to providing special needs dentistry, advocacy and communication can be just as important as clinical skills.
Homam Albaghdadi, adjunct professor at the Faculty, knows this well. He partnered up with Special Olympics Ontario (SOO) to design an experiential learning workshop to help better prepare students to care for patients with special needs. The organization has an advocacy arm that connects with partners in the health professions fields to facilitate care for its member athletes and help raise awareness about issues important to these populations.
“When I was first contacted by Shafeeq Armstrong from Special Olympics Ontario, they wanted to invite me to become a partner dentist in their network and to follow up on a survey I completed through the ODA,” says Albaghdadi. “But then we started talking about our experiences studying at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and I learned about a special needs self-study module he and his colleague Karla Millband helped develop for the Ontario Optometrist Association. Before I knew it, we were brainstorming something similar for dentistry.”
Along with his colleagues, Mount Sinai Hospital’s Farrah Awan and the Faculty’s assistant professor Nashat Cassim, Albaghdadi recently delivered the workshop during associate professor Laura Dempster’s dental public health and behavioural science course for DDS3 students. The workshop was designed using transformative learning theory as a framework. Typically, training focuses on technical know-how, with little confrontation of preconceived attitudes and communication needs. In this module, the emphasis is on the human aspects of special needs dentistry. The workshop included Special Olympics athletes and their caregivers who talked about their experiences in accessing dental care while highlighting their unique patient journeys and challenges.
“The focus of the workshop is to humanize special needs patients’ experience of care,” says Albaghdadi. “Our aim was to encourage students to confront their assumptions and guide their reflections in a way that helps them question their habits of mind, thereby fostering feelings of responsibility and motivation to care and advocate for those vulnerable populations.”
Albaghdadi, who is also a dentist at Mount Sinai Hospital, says the workshop may help enhance students’ experience at their hospital rotations where they care for patients with a variety of needs. He notes that this workshop complements the in-class and clinical training DDS students receive on caring for patients with special needs.
After receiving such good feedback on the workshop, Albaghdadi plans to run it again, including reporting on it at the American Dental Education Association conference in the coming year.
“The ultimate goal is to improve special needs training for students and link the learnings from the workshop and elsewhere in the curriculum with their clinical experience,” he says. “Treatment is one part of what we offer our patients but it’s also important that we approach them with the right attitude. It’s also our job to advocate for our patients and communicate on their behalf where possible so they get the best care possible.”
Photo: Homam Albaghdadi (Ed Yao Photography)