The pass key International college of dentists
Volume 14, issue 2 June 2017
OPENING THE DOOR TO THE INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE OF DENTISTS IN THE MARYLAND CHAPTER OF DISTRICT 4
FROM THE DESK OF THE DEPUTY REGENT JAMES W. TANEYHILL: Summertime Greetings! Here’s hoping that you and your family can enjoy a most pleasant Summer. Since our last edition of the Pass Key, our Maryland Chapter of the International College of Dentists (ICD) has hosted our joint annual meeting with the American College of Dentists (ACD). In my completely biased opinion, this meeting was extraordinary in that I was honored to introduce the American Dental Association’s “Humanitarian of the Year,” Maryland Fellow, Dr. Usa Bunnag. Dr. Bunnag presented a video to the 30 fellows and guests in attendance describing her awardwinning work in Thailand. I asked Maryland Chapter Editor Terry Hoffeld to write more about Usa, her wonderful work, her personal challenges and indomitable spirit, given that he has known her for many years and sponsored her Fellowship in the ICD; his article can be found later in this edition. Congratulations to Usa for all her wonderful work.
As reported in our Winter edition, the Maryland chapters of both the ICD and the ACD continued to staff the Ethics and Professionalism Seminar Series at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry (UMSOD). Again, Fellows Eric Katkow and Barry Lyon organized and facilitated our involvement as seminar mentors for the third-year students to whom this series is presented. Although service in this capacity on a weekday continues to present a challenge for those who are still practicing, several in In This Issue: that category joined the retirees and Dean’s Faculty to pro• From the Desk of the Deputy Revide a full complement of mentors this year. I thank all of gent James W. Taneyhill you for providing a very important service to the students. • Presentation by Fellow Usa BunOur Chapter continues to support the UMSOD Practice nag, ADA Humanitarian of 2017, at Management Study Club. This organization was started and Annual Joint ICD/ACD Dinner is totally administered by four third-year Dental students. Meeting As I have gotten to know these young men I have become more and more impressed, not just because of their energy • 2017 Ethics Seminar Series at UMSOD and initiative, but also for their maturity in “knowing what they don’t know.” Students at UMSOD currently receive no • Officers of the Maryland Chapter [Eric Katkow] [Barry Lyon]
no instruction in the business of Dentistry. These future entrepreneurs saw that void and have been proactively filling it. With the wonderfully generous help of ICD Fellow Joanne Block Reif, the club has scheduled Alan Schiff, Fellows Charlie Fine and Alan Seidman, a malpractice attorney as well as money managers and a business loan officer with PNC Bank, just to name a few. The student organizers have scheduled four seminars during the summer clinic session and plan to continue during their senior year. As I see it, their biggest challenge may be in finding some [Joanne Block-Reif] underclassman who will continue their legacy. Indeed, if you have a subject to present that you feel may be beneficial from a business or practice management stand point, please let Joanne or me know. Again, hats off to the organizing Dental students, Robert, Faisal, and Teepok. On behalf of the Maryland Chapter of the ICD, I am very proud that we have been able to sponsor your effort and we look forward to continuing the relationship.
[Teepok, Robert, Deputy-Regent Taneyhill and Fazisal at the ICD/ACD Joint Dinner]
A word about membership: It appears that our Chapter will have four candidates for potential induction at the annual meeting in October in Atlanta. A sincere thank you to those Fellows who took the time to identify, propose and sponsor candidates for Fellowship. The time is always appropriate to approach your friends and colleagues about membership in the world’s most prestigious honorary dental fraternity. Please consider sponsoring a candidate for membership in 2018! Each year the USA Section of the ICD and Procter and Gamble Company sponsor both a Humanitarian award and a Leadership award given to a graduating senior in each Dental school. During the
Awards Ceremony at UMSOD on May 15, there was no Humanitarian award presented this year, but the Leadership award was presented to James A. Kiefer in recognition of his demonstrated leadership and future leadership potential. District 4 Vice Regent Dr. Ed Morris presented the award. Congratulations to (now) Dr. Kiefer.
Finally, I plan to relinquish, or maybe extinguish, my tenure as Deputy Regent coincident with our annual business meeting in the Fall. I am asking that you consider stepping up and assuming a leadership role in our component. The duties are not onerous and you will receive plenty of guidance and assistance. The Deputy Regency of this organization is a very rewarding position. Please let me know. In Fellowship, Jim
PRESENTATION BY FELLOW USA BUNNAG, ADA HUMANITARIAN OF 2017, AT ANNUAL JOINT ICD/ACD DINNER MEETING Each Spring, the Maryland Fellows of both the International College of Dentists (ICD) and the American College of Dentists (ACD) hold a joint dinner meeting, with an invited speaker on a topic of interest to both groups. This year, the ICD organized the meeting and the speaker, a Fellow of both Colleges, was Dr. Usa Bunnag. The Joint meeting convened at the Airport Marriott Hotel on Thursday, April 27. The presentation by Dr. Bunnag outlined her work over the past fourteen years bringing Dental services to rural residents of her native country of Thailand. Her initiative and continued service in the project through the years have gained her the recognition of being designated, Humanitarian of the Year 2017 by the American Dental Association as announced broadly by a press release (http://www.ada.org/en/press-room/news-releases/2017-archives/january/dr-usa-bunnagchosen-as-ada-humanitarian-award-recipient) and as initially reported to the ADA membership in the ADA News on January 9 (http://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2017-archive/january/ dr-usa-bunnag-is-adas-2017-humanitarian-award-recipient). An article in Dentaltown magazine provided a similar overview of the dedication of Dr. Bunnag to community and international service, prior to the announcement of the ADA award (http://www.dentaltown.com/magazine/articles/5886/do-goodhow-smiles-on-wings-took-flight). In order to appreciate the depth of dedication that Dr. Bunnag has provided to serving patients in need, it is useful to understand the course of her career. In her usual humility, she did not make this progression a topic of her presentation at the dinner meeting. She was born in Thailand and moved to the
United States at the age of 14. After High School, she became a Dental Assistant in a local Pediatric Dental practice, where she first befriended our two children. Attending college part-time, she completed requirements for and was admitted to the Howard University School of Dentistry. After earning her D.D.S. degree, she worked on contract for the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services for several years, during which time she learned the organizational requirements for community service. When she opened her own private practice, service to the underserved and unserved included and still includes treatment of poverty-sworn Buddhist monks and thousands of children under the Medicaid program. Many, if not all of us have worked at some point on some sort of community service or humanitarian project, and can appreciate not only how disruptive that can be, but also how immediately rewarding the experience becomes. Most of those opportunities are discovered and practiced in the same community or the nearby vicinity, under the aegis of a long-term charity, government service or repeated event structurally organized to allow practitioners to “plug-in” and devote their time and effort to the delivery of Dental treatment. As briefly cited above, Dr. Bunnag has participated in donation of her services throughout her career, in her practice, in the community, in the County and in the State. During her first few years of practice in Montgomery County, her curiosity about ways in which she might be of similar service to the citizenry of the rural areas of Thailand, led her to explore those possibilities, entirely on her own. Visits to the regions of her childhood affirmed not only the need of the patients, but also their enthusiasm for her suggestion of organizing a mechanism to deliver appropriate treatment. In 2003, she formed a non-profit corporation, dubbed, “Smiles on Wings.” Working with two Dental Assistants, she treated one-hundred patients that year. This progressed to semi-annual visits with more and more support, both Dental and Medical. In the intervening years, the Mission Clinic has evolved. Whereas many missions of this sort are dependent entirely on an assumed unlimited availability of volunteers and continue only as long as the supply of person-power is provided, Dr. Bunnag built into her visits mechanisms for training and equipping the local Thai
friends she has made through the years, so that soon, the Mission will be self-sustaining. Scholarships, not only for training in the Dental arts and sciences, but for educating orphans and poor children from elementary school onward have been set up under “Smiles on Wings” support. This is a project begun as a charitable donation of one amazing Dentist and has become the center for growth and development in the Maesariang Province of Thailand. Thus, the award from the American Dental Association is not just for the massive donation of services of one person to an unserved population, but for visionary planning to sustain that healthcare for the foreseeable future. In 2015, The ICD Foundation awarded “Smiles on Wings” an $18,000 grant in support of its mission to improve the health, well-being, and long-term self-reliance of underserved Thai communities. “Smiles on Wings” used these funds to fully furnish the permanent Dental clinic and to provide community outreach and Dental education. Indeed, the Foundation considers this international activity so exemplary of the mission, vision and intent of the ICD that they have invited Dr. Bunnag to address the new Fellows during their Orientation session prior to induction in Atlanta in October. Even those of us already familiar with the work that Usa has been doing in Thailand were awestruck by her presentation at the ICD/ACD joint dinner meeting. If, after reading the articles linked in the first paragraph and this brief summary of a decade-and-a-half of devoted effort by Dr. Bunnag, you would like to either actively participate in Thailand or to make a financial contribution (tax -deductible) to the “Smiles on Wings” project, I encourage you to visit the website: http://www.smilesonwings.org/
2017 ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES AT UMSOD In the Winter of 2016, Fellows of the ICD, supported by Fellows of the ACD and several of the Dean’s Faculty of the UMSOD restarted a seminar series that had fallen by the wayside from the curriculum, namely, Dental Ethics. During that first year, under the administrative leadership of Clinical Assistant Professor Vanessa Benavent, the new course evoked unprecedented interest, not only among the third-year Dental students who participated, but also among those of us who mentored the discussions. The school and the volunteers agreed that there was value in continuing the series and feedback on both the positive and negative aspects of the way it ran were collected, in anticipation of a 2017 sequel. In the Winter of 2017, Clinical Assistant Professor Fotini V. Anagnostopoulos-King was placed in charge of administration of the program, in addition to serving as General Practice Director of the Department of General Dentistry. Having received the feedback from the previous year and after consulting with many of us who participated, she made several changes, much to the convenience of the volunteers. In particular, the [Fotini A-King]
time of the sessions was moved earlier, so that the second discussion group on each
date was finished by Noon. This allowed an afternoon back in the office for some volunteers and avoidance of commuter congestion for all.
For convenience, the cases selected for discussion were the same ones used during the first year, namely: 1) periodontal status of a transfer patient; 2) the impaired Dentist; 3) Dentist-patient relationship in regard to insurance carriers; 4) Dentist control of treatment plan within a corporate practice setting; and 5) responsibility for failure of treatments performed previously by another Dentist. These discussions were conducted once per week, with one cancelled for inclement weather. The final two classes scheduled were held in the lecture hall. The sixth was a presentation with subsequent question-and-answer discussion on avoiding situations in which the license privilege may be compromised. The speaker was Dr. Ron Moser, then serving as the President of the Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners. The final session was composed of a panel of representatives of the various University of Maryland professional schools, discussing cases which cross the boundaries of a single profession and require Interprofessional collaboration to resolve. [Ron Moser] Participating volunteers this year included: Larry Cohen, Steve Cohen, Gary Colangelo, Terry Hoffeld, Howard Freundlich, Eric Katkow, Mel Kushner, Bill Maas, Fred Magaziner, Maurice Miles, Oksana Mishler, Andrea Morgan, Ron Moser, Deborah Rodriguez, Sheldon Seidel, King Smith, Mitchell Stark, R.C. Vanden Bosche, Nair Velez, Dave Verma, and Lawrence Whitney. It appeared that every one of us enjoyed the experience. If you have not had the opportunity to mentor Dental students in this context, please start thinking about participating during the upcoming Winter of 2018. This material is too important on a day-to-day basis in practice to omit from the mindset of an entire class of students. OFFICERS OF THE MARYLAND CHAPTER Deputy Regent: Dr. James W. Taneyhill Counselor: Dr. W. King Smith Treasurer: Dr. Arpana S. Verma Editor: Dr. J. Terrell Hoffeld Leadership Coordinator: Dr. Edwin L. Morris