Ryan Pasiewicz DMD 15
Ryan Pasiewicz DMD 15 spent the final months of his third year of dental education at the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine in the northern most point in the United States—Barrow, Alaska—on an elective externship through the Indian Health Service (IHS). Despite the forbidding climate, the externship is selective, and it is unusual for a third-year student to be chosen.
Pasiewicz braved tundra, near-constant daylight, and snow drifts in the three-mile-wide town of Inupiat Eskimos. He worked at the seven-month-old Samuel Simmons Memorial Hospital. Before him, Lindzy Goodman DMD 14 was the most recent extern at the hospital and Andrew Jorgensen also completed an IHS externship in Alaska in 2012.
He saw four to five patients a day, most of them getting three or four restorations in a single visit. “My speed and competency has definitely increased,” Pasiewicz says. “I learned a lot clinically and also about practice management.”
The externship is tailored for people who, like Pasiewicz, are interested in public health and who also might be interested in working in Barrow or for the Indian Health Service somewhere else in the US after graduation.
“Public health is a big initiative in Barrow,” Pasiewicz explains. “The population is small so the case managers can follow up with patients more easily. But they struggle in getting children less than two years of age to the dentist.”
While in Barrow, Pasiewicz also made a presentation to nurse practitioners called Two is Too Late (for the first dental visit). It encouraged nurse practitioners to do a quick dental exam during the baby’s first visit, suggest fluoride application, or tell parents to take the baby to a dental health center.
“Early Childhood Caries (ECC) is rampant in Barrow because of the amount of candy and soda they have,” Pasiewicz adds. “All the food is flown in. Fruits and vegetables are limited. Milk can cost $12. They take seats out of planes and put candy and soda in their place because it’s such a priority in the surrounding villages.”
He describes attending a college graduation there. “Similar to the Hawaiian tradition of giving a lei or crown of flowers when you graduate, they make lei and crowns out of fun size candy bars. I saw a girl with horrible teeth who wore many lei and crowns of candy.”
Pasiewicz learned about the culture in Barrow.
“In Spring, they start the tradition of breaking trail to the edge of the ice,” says Pasiewicz. “It is 5 to 10 miles out to the Arctic and it takes 4 to 6 weeks. Any boy who is 10 or older learns the tradition.”
Once they reach the Arctic, residents begin the hunt for whales. They are sacred animals. The Inupiat depend on and use every part of them.
“They raise a flag and people from town come out to the edge. It takes 100 people to pull in the whale. They pull off the whale’s blubber, after which they place the carcass on an ice block back in the ocean.”
“We are so proud that Ryan was selected to complete the elective externship through the Indian Health Service in Barrow, Alaska,” said Associate Dean for Global & Population Health Dr. Michelle Henshaw. “The externship offers incomparable opportunities to improve clinical skills, work with underserved populations, and experience a vastly different culture. I look forward to seeing how Ryan implements what he has learned in Alaska in his future career pursuits.”
Photos are available on Facebook and Flickr. Note: photos contain graphic images of a whale carcass.