Portable dental units and its applicability in Supervised apprenticeship

Introduction: Outside activities aims to integrate the dental student to the real situation of a dental office and show oral health situation of São José dos Campos (SJC) community as will as to offer treatment to the community as a social activity. The student must be prepared to follow integrally and to have an interdisciplinary view to deal with general and oral health problems, participating of preventive and restorative programs outside Dental School. Material and methods: Using portable dental units, dental students applied projects of dental prevention while the more advanced students worked in the 4th Level of Leavel and Clark (Limitation of the Problem) continuing the prevention project, now with a curative therapy. This work joins curative and preventive treatment and was applied in two communities of SJC periphery (Putim and Campo dos Alemães) and is associated to the Social project Vale a Pena Viver of Vale do Paraíba University (UNIVAP). Two portable units were mounted to fulfill the community needs. One of them is composed by two complete chairs, two sinks, closet to store the material, air conditioner, amalgamate of capsule, lightering unit and X-ray room. In order to perform this project, we were helped by the catholic church of SJC that installed the portable units in the church of the above-cited communities. Results: The present methods could provide that in 4 months of work the obtained results improved the oral health of attended population. The students were stimulated to observe the community needs as they dealt with their problems. Conclusions: The reality of the communities was revealed to the students and also the population began to understand the importance of the prevention of oral diseases as they leaven how to brush their teeth and how to maintain these habits.