Last year, SSOMS President Larry Nissen initiated a new registry to document the many good deeds that our member OMS’s perform daily for our less fortunate populations. Larry called this program “The Year of the Volunteer”. The impressive results were reported at the San Diego meeting causing the SSOMS Board to vote unanimously to continue the registry another year.
All of us understand the significant unmet need that exists in oral health care and as benevolent oral and maxillofacial surgeons, we continually provide both emergency and semi-emergency care to many patients, without compensation. This is done in private offices, public health facilities, community and faith-based programs, as well as on domestic and international mission trips. Unfortunately, the world outside of dentistry is not aware of the magnitude of these ongoing efforts.
A form is included with this letter to use to report your volunteer activities. It is our hope that 100% of our members will provide at least one (and hopefully more than one) donated oral and maxillofacial or dental-related service during the next year. The form is very basic; it reports the member’s name (only for the purpose of calculating the % of membership participating), state of practice, the service(s) provided and a value or hours of service(s) provided. An aggregate report will be generated that will document the total number of services provided and the total value of services provided by SSOMS members. I assure you that great care will be taken so that no individual information will be reported, only the aggregate data.
This information will again be reported to the membership at our annual meeting and can be used by the SSOMS and state societies in their advocacy and media efforts. Retired members who are not practicing can qualify by participating in dental, medical, community or faith-based charitable efforts.
As members of the SSOMS, we have an obligation to the society as learned, healthcare professionals. This information will only serve to help validate our Society’s active participation in achieving its mission to the public that we serve.
Thank you in advance for your participation.
Dr. Michael E. Miller, President