By Chris Baker, RN, DMD H aving learned to provide orthodontic treatment to my patients is the single reason I’ve stayed in dentistry. I love every minute of it! If not for this one-on-one, precious, amazing, outstanding area of care and life-transformation for my child patients, my specialty would have been one from which I would have run. Let me explain. Our beloved specialty of Pedi-atric Dentistry, the treatment of children, was organized and begun by Dr. Samuel D. Harris, the “Father of Children’s Dentistry. In 1927 he began his Detroit Pedodontics Study Club and twenty years later, the AAP, Ameri-can Academy of Pedodontics, now AAPD, was founded. In case you don’t know, my specialty, the treatment of chil-dren, Pediatric Dentistry, has been usurped by big corporations (insur-ance companies and government corporations) so much so that the specialty residency programs that train pediatric dentists now train the specialist to focus on and utilize sedation and general anes-thesia to be able to accomplish the purported restorative care, effi-ciently, impersonally, and thus to make money for third parties as well as the doctor’s own living. This replaces focusing on the child patient and his/her parents, omit-ting and eliminating what to me, 14 Fall 2020 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Fall 2020: Page 14
