Alani Kalfayan, RN Family Nurse Practitioner Graduate Student

When I first started nursing school, Sandy approached me asking if I would help her add nursing curriculum to her dental hygiene program in Bolivia.

“No way,” I thought, “I barely know the difference between an IV and a needle. And why would a dental hygienist need nursing skills?”

Not nine months later, I’m sitting in an early-90’s passenger van for eight, packed to the brim with more than 15 people bouncing over the rock-lined “road” to Carmen Pampa, Bolivia. I was still skeptical of our mission to combine the career pathways of nursing and dental hygiene into one role to better serve the rural communities in Bolivia, and nervous about what we would find once we got there. The research I had conducted for my Master’s in Nursing at Seattle University had made clear the difficulty that rural healthcare workers had reaching their patients, acquiring supplies, and having the necessary skills to treat acute patients when no other practitioners existed. But, it wasn’t until I stood next to a nurse that served the 13 surrounding rural communities of Carmen Pampa and really listened to her stories that I realized that Sandy’s seemingly-lofty mission, would fill a real, fundamental need for these people.

Imagine never having seen a toothbrush before.

When we handed toothbrushes to the people we met living in the rural communities of Bolivia, we handed them their first toothbrush and their first step toward preventative medicine. As Americans, we grow up complaining about brushing twice a day and about visiting the dentist for our annual teeth cleaning, but what many of us don’t realize is that cleaning our teeth prevents disease. In 2000, the American Surgeon General released a report, The National Call to Action to Promote Oral Health, outlining the importance of changing perceptions surrounding the connection between oral health and overall health. The report provided state-of-the-science evidence about the “associations between chronic oral infections and diabetes, osteoporosis, heart and lung conditions, and certain adverse pregnancy outcomes” (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, 2000).

Together, Sandy and I, a dental hygienist and a nurse, are working to bridge the gap between nursing and dental hygiene to provide preventative healthcare to the people of Bolivia. We’ve created a partnership with a five-year nursing program at the Universidad Academica Campesina – Carmen Pampa, in Bolivia, and they are excited to send their first nursing student to Smiles Forever in June 2011 for dental hygiene skills training. We hope this partnership will help to create a new degree pathway that will produce a holistically trained practitioner to better serve the rural communities in Bolivia.

Ultimately, Sandy and I hope to ensure that when the thousands of Bolivians living a two-day drive high in the Andes are reached by a nurse, they will receive holistic care from head to toe – and, for the first time, be taught how to use a toothbrush to prevent disease.

Reference: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2003). Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General (NIH Publication No. 03-5303). Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health.