CDA Essentials 2019 • Volume 6 • Issue 7

35 Issue 7 | 2019 | I ssues and P eople Working at a dental clinic designed to serve People Living with HIV A month after Dr. Nick Aytoglu started working at the Positive Living Community Dental Clinic, one of his patients didn’t show up for a dentures fitting. Dr. Aytoglu had already treated the man; he’d needed extractions to treat infections and impressions for dentures. He’d been struggling to eat because his infected tooth nerves were so painful. On the phone, the patient explained that he couldn’t afford to travel from New Westminster to the clinic in downtown Vancouver. The next morning, Dr. Aytoglu drove an hour and a half return to New Westminster to pick up his patient so he could receive dental treatment, and then the clinic provided the man with bus fare to get home. “That’s when I realized that this job would be different, and that I would really get to see the difference we’d made in people’s lives,” says Dr. Aytoglu. “Our patient was able to eat again. He felt better, and he was smiling.” Dr. Nick Aytoglu