Four New Buildings For Dental School

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30192, 25 July 1963, Page 8

Four New Buildings For Dental School

Four additional buildings are planned for the Health Department’s School for Dental Nurses and Children’s Clinic in Christchurch. The extensions have been made necessary by the increased numbers of students .at the school and the planned addition of an orthodontic section to the facilities of the dime and school. A feature of the extensions will be the division of the training facilities of the school. Instead of all the training being concentrated at the existing property in Colombo street north, two centres will be opened next March in the Aorangi and Burnside primary schools. This will be the first time in New Zealand that a dental training school has been split in this way.

The buildings to be provided are two 12 -chair units, one at each of the two primary schools, and a generalpurpose building and the orthodontic clinic, both on the Colombo street property. All these buildings will be new except the orthodontic clinic, which will be the adolescent dental clinic building from the Christchurch Technical College. It is intended to move this during the coming school holidays. The clinic will be situated on the main entrance to the training school, just in front of the nearer wing and connected to it by a covered way. Burnside Unit

The first of the new buildings to be put up will be the unit at Burnside. The Education Board will be responsible for borth this unit and that at Aorangi, and according to the board’s assistant chief architect <Mr R. M. Evenden) the plans will be started soon and tenders called in about two months.

The unit will be situated just off Memorial avenue, to the righit of the right-of-way to the school. It will contain a waiting-room, a combined lunch and lecture room, offices, a change-room, and toilet facilities. The corresponding unit at Aorangi will not be planned until some experience has been gained in the use of the Burwood unit, but in the meantime temporary accommodation will be made available in the Aorangi school so that the clinic there may open at the same time as that at Bumside.

Authority for drawing sketch plans for the generalpurpose building in Colombo street had just been received by the Christchurch Office of the Ministry of Works, the district architect (Mr P. C. Cornish) said yesterday. Final plans should be ready for tenders to be called in early next year. Thf building will be of two storeys and in concrete-block veneer, in a style to match that of the existing main building, which gained the bronze medal of the New Zealand Institute of Architects. It will be on the Colombo street frontage of the school property. According to the principal of the school (Mr E. Brebner) the top floor will contain four bedrooms a lounge, a kitchendiningroom, sewing and linen room, and an office, the living accommodation being for the permanent domestic staff of the school hostel. On the ground floor there will be a cafeteria and kitchen for day girls, bulk and dispensary stores a records room, a laundry and drying-room for hostel residents, and porters’ and gardeners’ rooms. The removal of the stores from the present administration wing will enable the wing to be given over entirely to offices. Schools Affected The units at Burnside and Aorangi will each draw on several neighbouring schools for patients. The Burnside unit will draw not only on the Burnside Primary School but also on the Cobham Intermediate School and the convent school of Christ the King, while the Aorangi unit will serve the Wairakei. Waimalri, and St. Patrick’s Schools and Loreto College as well as Aorangi. Infants in State schools will continue to be treated at clinics in their own schools, to avoid their having to travel. The idea of decentralising clinical instruction at the school had arisen because of the impracticability of expanding much further the intake of child patients at Colombo street, where already 20 schools were being catered for, Mr Brebner said. The bus bringing children to the clinic was already fully engaged. The position would have become critical next year, when the girls of the 1963 intake reached their second year, the stage at which clinical practice was given. The intake this year was 81, nearly 50 per cent, above the previous level, and it was expected that this new level would now be the normal one The girls who went to the western city schools for their clinical practice would take their lectures in the Burnside unit. The new orthodontic unit would be headed by a specialist of the rank of principal dental officer Applications were invited some weeks ago, a pndn aompat nflnearly?i, and an appointment was expected soon. The orthodontist would carry exit work in his specialty among children from the schools served by the training school, and would also lecture and demonstrate in orthodontics to the dental nurse trainees.