Trevor Holcombe and Bruce Newman, Paediatric Dentists

Bruce and Trevor

Trevor Holcombe’s simple comment – “we like to help where we can” – hardly conveys the importance of the contribution he and fellow paediatric dentist Bruce Newman are making to improve the dental health of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory.

When Trevor and Bruce aren’t working together at the Kingston Oral Health Care Centre in Brisbane, they are in the Top End treating Aboriginal children from remote communities for dental work.

“In the Northern Territory, the need for paediatric dentists is quite high,” Trevor says.  “There are high decay rates, and kids don’t get a chance to see a dentist very often.

“We’ve just done our third short-term placement, this time at Katherine Hospital, and in three days we saw 25 patients who all needed a general anaesthetic.  We arrived in Katherine at 9am, got straight into it and worked on nine patients that day. That’s a pretty large load.

“A lot of our patients are brought in from communities. You have a limited amount of time, and you work all day, but it’s also enjoyable. It’s nice to be able to achieve something for these kids.”

Bruce agrees. “It gives you great satisfaction and I would say to others who might be thinking about working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health – do it,” he says. “You’ll be working with other people who are very dedicated and want the best for their patients.

“The basis of good dental health is brushing your teeth, but when kids have problems with their teeth and they’re in pain, they don’t want to brush and problems get worse. We leave them with a healthy mouth, and that’s a good basis for them to start over.

“It’s good to have two specialists working together, because you have such a large amount of work to do.  From a professional point of view, putting six to eight stainless steel caps in one mouth is a fair amount of work.  It’s easy to miss something, especially if you’re getting tired, so we help each other out.

“Also, sometimes we need to go and talk with the families, and the other one can keep working. But really, it’s the support staff who make it all possible.  They are just fantastic, and we couldn’t do it otherwise.”

Download Trevor and Bruce’s poster