Lasting Impressions | Fall 2017

36 © NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY NSU COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE © 37 Alumni Impressions the specialty and encouraged me to take it, otherwise I didn’t know it existed,” she said. “Because of my experience with my brother, I didn’t hesitate to do so.” Alohali’s search led her to the United States in 2013 and, eventually, to the CDM, where she found the training she needed at the Schein Clin- ical Suite, as well as a mentor in Ellen. “I owe him every bit of knowledge I got in that clinic,” Alohali said. “He is exactly what I wanted to become. It’s like he had a unique power with special needs patients. They loved him, because he cares about them beyond what you could imagine.” Ellen said he tries to teach dental students to build trust with their patients, and much of that comes from taking cues from the patients themselves—a technique Alohali has. “She’s amazing,” he said. “She is so charmingly aggressive that she makes things happen.” Learning the intricacies of caring for special needs patients was one of Alohali’s objectives in coming to South Florida. But she also wanted to receive certification in special needs dentistry. While the CDM had the clinic when she arrived, it didn’t have the certification in the specialty. “I kind of lost hope that they would open a program for me,” she said. Then she talked with the college’s dean, Linda C. Niessen, D.M.D., M.P.H., M.P.P. “She made the impossi- ble happen,” Alohali said. The CDM now offers a one-year certificate in special needs dentistry, in part due to Alohali’s quest. “It’s hard to have a program in special needs if you don’t have a student. She was our first student,” Niessen said. “She helped us start a program.” TAKING UP THE CHALLENGE Four words are all it takes to describe the CDM’s Henry Schein Special Needs Clinical Suite: “simple dentistry, complex patients.” That’s how Diane Ede-Nichols, D.M.D., M.H.L., M.P.H., professor and chair of community and public health sciences at the CDM, describes the clinic, which treats 25 to 30 patients a day, or more than 5,000 each year. Dental students who work at the clinic are presented with more challenges to consider. “Just getting a toothbrush in [patients’] mouths can be impossible,” said Ede-Nichols, who also is an associate professor of public health at NSU’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine. For that reason, many dentists anesthetize special needs patients or refer them elsewhere. In Saudi Arabia, Ellen said, “They took the simple way to put people to sleep and extract all their decayed teeth. And, Alohali saw there was a better way.” At the clinic, students learn less- intimidating methods. And, perhaps no one is less intimidating than Alohali, who is barely five feet tall. She jokes that often the clinic staff gave her the largest patients, and some of the most difficult cases. “I had a patient who came to us after an unfortunate incident where she fell and broke her front teeth,” Alohali said. “She was depressed because people started calling her vampire. We were able to restore her smile.” “DOCTOR, DO YOUR MAGIC” Alohali gets a great sense of accom- plishment from her work. “Mostly, I perform simple dental procedures. When you know you stopped or Across the Smiles from Florida to Saudi Arabia BY STEVE MCGRATH About 90 percent of the patients Tagreed Ali Alohali cares for in Saudi Arabia have special needs. “[Steve Ellen] taught us how to distract ourselves from the sadness that comes with this specialty and focus on performing our job with high spirits.” —Tagreed Ali Alohali Patients with autism, Down syn- drome, mental or physical impair- ments, and the elderly can travel great distances to receive treatment at the Henry Schein Special Needs Clinical Suite operated by the College of Den- tal Medicine (CDM). Even Steve Ellen, D.D.S., the CDM assistant professor who super- vises the clinic, commutes from Boynton Beach to the North Miami Beach clinic to teach students how to treat special needs patients. But few came farther to reach the clinic than 2016 alumna Tagreed Ali Alohali, B.D.S., M.S. For her, it was 7,447 miles. Alohali graduated with her B.D.S. in 2010 from Riyadh Colleges of Dentistry and Pharmacy in her native Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She soon realized that her training offered no guidance in dealing with special needs patients—an area of great importance in her country, which has more than one million people with disabilities. One of those patients is Alohali’s older brother, who was born with cerebral palsy. Alohali credits her supervisor, Khalid Althekry, B.D.S., M.S.D., for putting her on the special needs path. “He was the one who explained to me