Presidio of Monterey Dental Clinic ensures readiness with modern technology

As an early adopter of digital dentistry, the Presidio of Monterey Dental Clinic ensures warfighter readiness through the safe employment of modern dental technology.

Dr. (Maj.) Dustin Davis, the officer in charge of the PoM Dental Clinic, has served as an Army dentist for eight years and in multiple dental clinics across the Army. Davis says the PoM clinic is one of the most technologically advanced he has seen.

"Digital dentistry is the future. Using this technology, we can accomplish a crown replacement in one day when traditional dental clinics might take eight to ten weeks," Davis said.

The traditional method of making a crown requires an impression of the patient's mouth with goopy, uncomfortable material, shipping the hardened mold to Fort Gordon, Georgia and waiting for the replacement crown to return in the mail.

"These temporary crowns typically last one to two weeks before they fall off," said Davis. "If they have to wait 10 weeks for a crown, they're going to go to sick call multiple times."

Multiple sick call visits mean service members are missing valuable training time getting the crown replaced or are living with missing teeth. Not only can this negatively impact a service member's training time, it impacts quality of life.

The PoM Dental Clinic's digital transition came with significant change and training for clinic employees. Adoption of digital dentistry required significant on the job training for PoM dental technicians. Dental technicians went from baking a mold in an oven to modeling teeth in state-of-the-art manufacturing machines.

"I'm not sure there's another clinic in the Army like this. The Army does a great job at ensuring we are equipped with the technology we need to provide the best and safest care to service members. I have never seen a full digital clinic in the Army," Davis said. "The shift to digital dentistry here was thanks to Dr. Michael Kroll who was an Army digital expert and served previously as the PoM Dental Clinic OIC."

Several years ago, Kroll began the transformation of the PoM Dental Clinic from conventional to fully digital. This change meant PoM dental technicians who have mastered the traditional method of dentistry needed adapt to new techniques.

"The change was a bit scary," said Erica Flores, a registered dental assistant at the PoM Dental Clinic. "We only knew the way we used to work. We had to trust the system and forget the old ways so we could adapt to a new way of providing care."

The implementation of new technology was also applied to the sterilization of dental equipment and tools.

"The amount of safety that goes into the care of our service members here is above and beyond what happens in the private practice world," Davis said. "Most dental clinics have one room for all stages of sterilization. We have a dirty room and a clean room with a pass through cleaner and we run multiple tests to ensure sterilization."

Davis said some of the additional safety measures they implement are temperature detecting tape on instruments to ensure adequate heat was used during cleaning, washing tools with filtered water to avoid impurities and recording each instrument sterilization in a logbook.

From computer aided manufacturing to sterilization, all aspects of the PoM Dental Clinic have incorporated modern technology to ensure the service members stationed at the Presidio of Monterey are healthy and mission focused in the most efficient manner possible.