“I created my own suit, if you will,” said Simmi Patel, DDS, opening a duffel bag full of supplies. “It’s all to show that when we have patients with disabilities, we need to rethink our instructions with them.”
Patel, a clinical assistant professor in the public health sciences department at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry, has spent the past year and a half on a unique project in the college’s community clinics. Thanks to a grant she received in December 2020, she is using these supplies to provide empathy training to dental students.