ANKENY, Iowa — Des Moines Area Community College Dental Hygiene students need your help to graduate.

DMACC’s Dental Hygiene clinic helps the students improve their skills by offering dental cleaning and services for a fraction of the cost.

This time of year the clinic sees low patient numbers. Without those patients, hygiene students will have a difficult time graduating.

“Students have requirements to meet with different age populations,” Jackie Kollasch, DMACC Dental Hygiene Program chair said. “They need to have people that maybe don’t go to the dentist regularly or they can see someone who hasn’t been to the dentist in 30 years.”

Students are supervised during appointments. Students try to make the appointment, typically about four hours long, as easy and comfortable as possible for patients.

“We have blankets, pillows, we can take breaks,” said Megan Solberg, a first-year dental hygiene student. “We want to make sure they are getting the best oral health care they need from us.”

“We do get patients in here that say it’s always the best cleaning that they’ve ever had,” Kollasch said. “That makes our students feel good. As a faculty and clinic, we enjoy seeing that.”