Torbett advocate for her patients and industry

DENTAL leader: ­Dr. Jennifer Torbett, right, owner of Crestview Dental Associates, with dental assistant Maria Mazzarese. Torbett encourages young women to consider dentistry as a career path. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
DENTAL leader: ­Dr. Jennifer Torbett, right, owner of Crestview Dental Associates, with dental assistant Maria Mazzarese. Torbett encourages young women to consider dentistry as a career path. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

Dr. Jennifer Torbett has a tip for young women trying to decide on a career: Go into dentistry.

It’s advice that would have surprised her younger self. But she speaks from experience. Her practice in Westerly is booming.

Torbett, at age 30, took over a 1,700-patient practice with five treatment rooms in 2007. In May, she will move into new office space with nine treatment rooms to serve her 2,700-3,000 patients.

Her path to dentistry was not a childhood dream. When Torbett, who was born and raised in Worcester, Mass., graduated in 1999 from Salve Regina University in Newport, she had not decided on a career in dentistry. Despite the example of her mother, who worked as a dental hygienist for 20 years, she said she thought dentistry was “disgusting.”

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“Then I got a job doing front-office work with an orthodontist and I changed my mind,” she said. “I enrolled at the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. After surviving the first year, when you take gross anatomy and dissect cadavers, I knew I could make it.”

By the second year of the four she spent studying to be a dentist, Torbett also began working as a dental hygienist, first in a dental practice in Hanover, Mass., and later in another in Wayland, Mass., and Boston.

Her first job after graduation from Tufts in 2006 as a doctor of medical dentistry was at the Uphams Corner Health Center in Dorchester, Mass., as a general dentist. Two years later, she was promoted to general director.

The following year she made a major career move. She left the center to join, as an associate dentist, the successful practice of a well-known dentist, Dr. Anthony DiMaio, in Westerly. And one year later, she acquired the practice and renamed it Crestview Dental Associates.

“That’s the name of the street where we’re located,” she explained. “I didn’t want to use my name because that would give us a low position in alphabetical listings.”

Torbett shrugs off any professional problems she has had in being accepted as a female dentist.

“Some initial shock, maybe, particularly among some of Dr. DiMaio’s Italo-American patients, but that attitude went away,” she said. “Dr. DiMaio was here for a while before he fully retired, and dealt with any misgivings. And patients do come to appreciate that female dentists are just as competent as males. Sometimes more competent. Also, there are special benefits: We tend to be gentler and we have smaller hands.”

In fact, Torbett contends that dentistry is rapidly becoming a major career opportunity for women.

“You see the evidence of this in the size of classes at Tufts,” she said. “When I was there less than 20 years ago, our class was about half men and half women. Now a significant majority are women.”

Torbett says that dentistry offers a number of very attractive advantages for women in the 21st century.

“You can work part time,” she said. “You can set your own schedule. … Another attractive feature is that, at least so far, dentistry is a profession not burdened by so many crippling regulations. And dentistry can provide a woman with a good living.”

Torbett and her husband have been married for 10 years. They have two children: a 9-year old daughter and a 7-year-old son. And through her professional connections and community service, Torbett has a crowded record of activity as a strong advocate of freedom from excessive regulation of dentistry and promotion of women in dentistry.

When she worked in Massachusetts, she was an active member of the Massachusetts Dental Society.

Now, in Rhode Island, she is vice president of the Rhode Island Dental Association and scheduled to be its next president; she is a board member of Dental Life Line, and a member of the International College of Dentists.

“It all takes a lot of time,” Torbett acknowledged, “but it is important to have a seat at the table. We don’t want to be tied into knots like the over-regulated medical profession.”

As Torbett prepares to move into her new offices, she is optimistic about the future of the dental profession.

Crestview has a staff of 12 and she plans the immediate addition of an associate dentist when the new offices are completed.

“We also will be incorporating the latest implant and digital technology,” she said. “That’s truly revolutionizing treatment, making it more accurate, faster and reducing cost. This is an exciting time for dentistry.” •

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