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- What originally drew me to this program
is the camaraderie I saw amongst the residents
during my interview process.
Everyone seemed really happy here
and they enjoyed hanging out with each other,
even outside of school, so that was a great sign
of a positive atmosphere.
Nice to have people who are flexible
and also supportive of each other's growth.
A lot of times when we have cases
that are really interesting,
we'll just come into the residents' room,
pull up the pictures and we'll start talking about
and everybody kind of huddles over.
So it's a great place to learn from each other.
- So OHSU traditionally has had a very well rounded program
that is very strong in the clinical experience,
but also sets you up to be a really good analytical thinker.
And we do a lot of good research here at the school,
but there's also such a wealth of knowledge
in our diverse faculty, that bring so many
different perspectives that some places you don't get that.
- I felt like we were gonna get quality education.
I did go to pre-doc here too,
so great hand skills, really clinical,
which I was really looking for,
as well as kind of the research component,
and the learning and the classroom setting too,
but not too much, like it was just
like this perfect balance.
The people, the place, and the program
and the quality of the program,
ultimately is why chose it here.
- I wanted to go to a program that's clinically strong.
And also somewhere that I could see myself fitting into,
with a family type of atmosphere,
and I think that's definitely true to OHSU's ortho program.
Everybody is super collaborative and friendly.
I think that's also why I was very attracted to this program
in the first place.
We have a pretty diverse group of people here
who genuinely care about each other.
- Our faculty bring lots of different experiences.
A lot of them will talk to us about
TAD mechanics or clear liners,
and then some of them will focus on teaching us
like three different ways to just close spaces,
or three different ways to do one particular thing.
So that when you get out into practice,
you are able to think on the spot
and work with whichever materials are available.
- It's really great to work with the residencies program.
They're energetic, they're curious, they wanna learn,
and it's just really great to be around them.
They have a great energy.
We live in a really beautiful part of the country.
We have a beautiful dental school and a beautiful clinic,
but I think even more than that,
we have a great community here.
And we're really bound by service to our patients,
learning through formal, but also informal education
and discovery through research.
- The clinical experiences are extremely varied
because of the clinical faculty here
have been trained all over the world.
And then the variety of patients that we have
is such that they'll get a very broad
and expansive experience.
The cleft kids that come in
give a very unique experience on the clinic.
And didactically, I think the program is unique
because Dr. Iwasaki and I are funded
by the National Institutes of Health.
And so we bring a perspective in terms of,
there'll be learning about things
that they won't see in the literature
for a goodly amount of time.
So they're all gonna be ahead of the curve
in terms of what's relevant to the orthodontics
and how it's gonna affect orthodontics in the future.
- In recent years, the didactic and research ends of it,
I feel like I've been strengthened,
but not at the expense of the clinical experience.
Our residents are starting about 60 patients each
and then they get transfer patients,
partially through their programs,
so they're seeing a lot of patients and again,
getting to treat with a variety of different techniques
with those different patients.
I feel like also the research end of things,
we have more residents who are publishing research
and presenting research at meetings,
so that's only strengthened our program as well.
- I think it's one of the few programs
that actually has assistants who are able
to kind of step away and help you to her side.
So that's really nice.
You can trust them with helping you out with procedures
and retiring your patients and stuff like that.
So it's really nice to have someone who can do
four handed orthodontics with you.
- We as dental assistants in general,
we help with X-rays and we'll take impressions.
We seek patients sometimes take wires in and take wires out,
no matter who we get in that's new or whatever,
we're really warm and welcoming.
And everybody is just happy go lucky up here,
we're always smiling and laughing and hanging out.
Kind of doesn't feel like work.
- I like the communication between the resident
and the front desk and the staff.
We're pretty open and pretty laid back about,
saying, hey, I need this done,
or I need you to switch this appointment
it's pretty open and fluid.
And I feel like we're just all working together.
- Portland as a city is such a great mix of urban
and suburban lifestyle if you wanted a little bit of both.
Being a person who loves hiking,
it's so fun to be able to on a weekend,
just drive out an hour and a half to Mount Hood
and go on random hikes there, or go to a lake.
It's great for outdoor activities,
the landscape is beautiful,
also most of my best pictures of sunsets,
and double rainbows and stuff have come from the city.
- So when I first came here to interview,
I landed in Portland with one of my friends
and immediately fell in love with the city.
It was full time, so beautiful, so many beautiful colors,
there's a lot of great food here, there was nightlife,
freely friendly people walking on the streets.
It's also one of those cities
where you have a lot of nature.
So it's really beautiful and we are able to get
to the coast quickly, all of the mountains
and exploring quickly.
So I already knew that I loved the city.
And I think that's really important in picking a program.
You have to make sure that you're going
to like the environment that you're in.
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