All 12 graduates of the Dental Hygiene program on the Warner Robins campus of Central Georgia Technical College took their National Board Written Exam and the Central Regional Dental Testing Service, Inc. clinical exam last month and came out with passing scores, but one student just made it out by the skin of her teeth.

Kimberly Coleman was set to take the clinical exam at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning at the Macon campus of CGTC, when on the Friday before she learned that her patient had backed out.

“I was extremely panicked,” she said. “I was trying to figure out how to find a patient in twelve hours. The first person I called was my instructor. Then I called another student to see if I could share a patient. Neither one of those worked out.”

For the clinical exam, students must find qualifying patients who are willing to participate, which is not always an easy task. Doing so in under twelve hours, even harder.

Coleman had one back-up patient suggested to her from another student, but the condition of that patient would have taken longer to clean during the clinical exam. At that point, the cry for a back-up got louder. With even less time on the clock, she went to anyone she could think of.

Her sister found two people, her brother found his father-in-law, and even her instructor pitched in.

“A social media cry was made, and we were able to open the clinic to screen some more patients and find someone,” said Kelly Scruggs, Dental Hygiene instructor at CGTC.

“The new patient was even better than the one I had planned for initially,” Coleman said.

She found a new patient and even a back-up that night. Coleman considered the condition of her new top candidate to be the best case scenario for her clinical exam, but she still asked the second patient to come as a back-up. Although the back-up was not used on Saturday, they were able to assist another student Sunday morning when their initial candidate was not able to be used.

As for the overall passing scores, it may be best to back-up.

“This is a tremendous achievement,” Scruggs said. “These exams are extremely difficult and having a 100 percent passage of both exams is a rare treat. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

The rigor and endurance needed for the exam cannot be understated. The written exam is computer based and consists of a morning and afternoon session. The morning session is a set of 200 questions lasting approximately three and a half hours. In the afternoon, the students returned for a four-hour session with 150 case-study questions.

The cost for both exams exceeds $1,000.