After 50 years as a school dental nurse, Glenda Young says winning children’s trust is the most rewarding part of her job. Photo: Supplied
After five decades of peering into kids' mouths, Tararua dental nurse Glenda Young still gets excited about going to work.
She chatted to Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan about choosing her profession at six years old, training with fellow teens in the '70s and the reward of winning a child's trust.
The school dental nurse with 50 years of service
"I'm going to be a dental nurse. I want to be a kind dental nurse," Young told her mother after a visit to the dental nurse as a six-year-old girl.
"[My mum] was forever quoting it. She's not here now of course but I never lived it down, saying that. It's been a passion of mine, to be honest with you."
Young is not quite sure how many kids she has treated - "I only count teeth" - but these days performs about 50 check-ups per week and 3000 treatments per year.
When it comes to the general state of children's teeth in the Tararua district, fluoridated water has been a real "deal breaker", she says.
In her local town of Pahīatua, where the water has no fluoride at all, tooth decay is rampant and fillings are very common.
"You come to a fluoridated area where the teeth are stronger, you're only doing small little cavities, a quick five-minute job and then the children are gone. [Fluoride is] just absolutely amazing. It's a real winner for me."
Improvements in filling material have also "halved the workload", Young says.
Young is the only one still working from a "real solid" core group of dental nursing friends who she trained with in Wellington in the early 1970s.
In a two-year course that was more like an apprenticeship, Young's class of teenage girls carved wax into teeth shapes and examined a 'mock mouth' with rubber tyres for cheeks.
Fast-forward to 2024 and Young says her popularity is evidence that the 'murder house' (a term used to describe a dental clinic) is now outdated.
"I can walk through a school now and they'll come up and say 'Glenda, when is it going to be my turn to come to the dental clinic?' I get nagged. It's ridiculous. I certainly didn't do that when I was a young girl."
These days, the "faster and quicker" machinery used in dental clinics makes the treatments much easier to take, Young says, and pain relief is always offered.
For her, the most rewarding thing about being a dental nurse is "meeting a nervous child and talking to them and winning their confidence and them leaving happy".
"It's just an overwhelming feeling of joy that that child's happy to come back. They're happy to have the work done and they come back and say 'Look at my filling. Doesn't it look great?' I'm thinking 'Oh, wow'. What I say is 'I've won that one over'."
On the streets of New Plymouth, Young is frequently approached by smiling adults whose mouths she treated in decades past.
"They tap me on the shoulder and say 'Oh, Glenda, hi. How are you?' I remember their faces but names just elude me. I love it. We talk and I say 'How many kids have you had? What are you up to now?' It's just lovely. I feel very honoured to still remember them and know them."
With no plans to retire, Young says she will know she's had enough of being a dental nurse when she no longer looks forward to it.
"I wake up every morning now and say 'Oh neat, I'm going to work'. I've done that every day."