Part of what makes Mountain Park stand out as a medical home for our patients is our care teams consisting of professionals from different healthcare specialties. An important part of our care is the dental providers, hygienists and assistants, like Kimberly Hoffman, an Affiliated Practice Dental Hygienist at our Baseline Clinic.

Kimberly has been with Mountain Park since 2017. She knew she wanted to get into dental care after an experience she had as a child.

“I got braces when I was in junior high and I can remember thinking ‘wow this is really, really cool’ and I wanted to become an orthodontist,” said Kimberly. “I got my bachelor’s degree and started working as a dental hygienist and I immediately loved it and decided I didn’t want to go on to become an orthodontist after all.”

Patients start receiving dental screenings during their wellness visits at four months and Kimberly continues seeing them until they are 18 years old and move on from pediatrics to family medicine. She loves working with children and interacting with their families.

“Being a hygienist, I get to work more closely with patients and have more interaction with them,” said Kimberly. “They are always talking with us, telling us about their lives and all the things they have going on.”

Most of the patients Kimberly sees are between 4-months and 5-years old. She says working with this age group is her favorite part of being a dental hygienist.

“I never had any kids of my of own, so getting to spend time with the little ones is a treat for me,” said Kimberly. “I find it so easy to play with them and if I could just spend all day making them smile, I would.”

But as many of us know, working in healthcare isn’t all fun and games. For Kimberly, one of the biggest struggles in her position is getting some patients to understand the importance of oral health.

“Working with such a diverse patient population, a lot of times patients might have different perspectives of healthcare and what is important,” said Kimberly. “I rely a lot on my coworkers to help me help our patients see the value in dentistry. I can ask a behavioral health consultant and a medical assistant to come with me and help with any barriers I find.”

It’s that teamwork that motivates Kimberly and, in her opinion, makes Mountain Park such a great place to work!

“I love all the people here. I like to be around them. I don’t like to sit in the provider offices and instead spend most of my time in the kidney beans,” said Kimberly. “We all have the same goal of helping people and we keep each other motivated. It gets really busy at Baseline and it’s always nice to get together at the end of the day and see how many patients we saw and just cheer each other on.”

At Mountain Park, Kimberly has found a position where she is not only living her passion of helping others, but she is also surrounded by a team that empowers and motivates her to make a difference in the lives of our patients.

For more information, please email info@mphc-az.org