Community Oral Care Stories: Part 3

We finally went to a new place to clean dentures! Well, not a new place, but a place we hadn't visited in over a month (maybe even two). And this would only be our second time visiting this place, so it almost felt like new. This assisted living place was near our dad's other dental office, and after interning at the office, we went straight to clean more dentures. Last time we were here, we only cleaned two people's dentures, as the workers had no idea of what to do. This time, things went more smoothly, with the workers directly leading us to the cleaning area and swiftly bringing in the pre-determined patients. There were still only two people, however, and one of them we had cleaned for last time as well.

The experience at the assisted living area was different from the nursing home we usually went to. At the nursing home, we would go from room to room to collect dentures, clean them in a separate room, and bring them back to the patients. In this place, however, there was a big table for the patients to sit at, so they would watch us directly as we cleaned their dentures. It also allowed for us to interact with the patients more, which was something we couldn't really do at the nursing home. I'll admit, I didn't do too much talking. It's just my nature to remain quiet, but my other family members were more talkative. Gladly, the two elderly people we cleaned for were also talkative and friendly, which led to some fun conversations between us throughout the whole cleaning process. This really helped bring up the cleaning experience. It's way better to talk and have fun while cleaning dentures than doing it isolated in a tiny cleaning room, am I right? Overall, we may have done less patients, but the experience and interactions were much better here.