NSU CDM Impressions Fall/Winter 2019

36 | COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE FACULTY IMPRESSIONS FACULTY Impressions range of services, including extractions, root-canal treatment, fillings, bite adjustments, and more. Many patients are screened to become comprehensive care patients and continue being treated in one of the predoc- toral or postdoctoral facilities. For Lehrer, the hands-on environment of the urgent care facility matches ideally with his teaching philosophy, which focuses on helping students gain skills through progres- sive learning. “If I think a student will benefit from doing a procedure, no matter the difficulty, I’m going to show them what to do, and I’m not going to micromanage them. They might get a third of it done before they need me to help them. The next time, because it was a hands-on experience, they might do two-thirds of it before needing help, and the next time they might do it all on their own. That’s progressive learning,” said Lehrer, who has been named Professor of the Year twice and was voted to hood the D4s at their recent graduation. The students aren’t the only ones learning in the Urgent Care Clinic, however. “Since I’ve been here, I have gotten an education on what stress can do to people, what it does to your bite, and how that extrapolates into pain,” he said. One recent example was a 24-year-old woman who came to the Urgent Care Clinic because of agonizing pain on the right side of her mouth. When the students reported they couldn’t find any- thing wrong with her, Lehrer approached it from another angle. He asked the woman if she’d experienced any stress lately. She said she had recently broken up with her longtime boyfriend. The added stress was causing her to grind her teeth at night, which caused her bite to be- come imbalanced and painful. They adjusted her bite and fixed the issue. Lehrer said his count is currently up to 25 patients who have come in purportedly needing root canals and have found relief with a simple bite adjustment. Lehrer even posted a sign on the Urgent Care Clinic wall reading “Occlusion! Occlusion! Occlusion!” as a vivid reminder to students to always check the patient’s bite. IMBALANCE CAN HURT “We’re all imbalanced in our bite, like when you walk, you may lean more to one side. That’s a functional imbalance. When you add in stress, you start grind- ing harder during your sleep, and after a while, the functional imbalance turns into a pathologi- cal imbalance and starts to hurt,” Lehrer explained. “Twenty-five times, in different situations, we balanced the patients’ bites, and then we would see them back in a week in case they might actually need a root canal. None of them ended up needing a root canal. At first, the patients look at me like I’m crazy just adjusting the bite. Then they come in and are amazed and happy and hugging us.” Lehrer said the lesson on stress has been like earning “another degree for me,” and he’s happily passing it on to the students. While the patients are coming in with stress, and the nature of an urgent care facility might be You’ve seen it on all the television courtroom dramas—that moment when the attorney calls his expert witness to the stand to offer a professional opinion on the evidence. If it were a case involving dental matters, that expert might be Harry Lehrer. It’s a job that started quite by accident with one case several years ago. Lehrer is now a well-known expert witness called on regularly to provide his dental knowledge in a variety of real-life court cases, from workers’ compensation to dental negligence. “Sometimes, I’m asked to support the plaintiff, which is usually the patient. Other times, I support the defense, which is the dentist,” Lehrer said. “For me to get involved, it has to be something meritori- ous, where I feel I can make a difference.” He has been asked whether a patient’s jaw numbness following a procedure could have been prevented, or if a worker’s injury was actually caused on the job or was a preexisting condition. The process encompasses reviewing files and X-rays and creating reports. Often, he attends depositions. “When I first started, some of the lawyers would try to discredit me. They don’t really do that anymore, because I have a proven reputation now,” he said. “What is it that Judge Judy says? ‘If you tell the truth, then you never have to worry about what you’re going to say.’ ” Do You Swear to Tell the Truth? (continued from page 34)