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SALZBURG, Austria: A 24-year-old former dental assistant has been sentenced to 20 months’ conditional imprisonment for practising dentistry without a licence, fraud, and commercial assault. Additionally, the woman, who has no qualifications other than an apprenticeship but secretly performed dental treatment, was also ordered to pay the victims €16,000 in compensation.
The treatment she had performed included drilling and extracting teeth, placing prostheses and inserting implants, and was conducted in the practice of the woman’s employer when the dentist was not present. The assistant changed appointments to times when she was alone in the practice until being caught in November 2012 (reported by Dental Tribune ONLINE).
As now reported by www.thelocal.at, the former dental assistant had gained confidence with the use of a syringe and dental drill, and began to feel that she could perform the work herself. “Suddenly I felt important, and thought I would try it. I’d created a fantasy world,” she said, according to the website. However, she had performed treatment on patients poorly and often even without gloves or an apron.
One of the patients required 14 separate treatments. “I had a toothache after each appointment. Once she drilled me so badly, I almost jumped towards the ceiling in pain,” the patient stated. In total, the fake dentist treated seven patients over a period of three months and collected cash payments of around €21,000.
In addition to practising without a licence, the woman was accused of borrowing cash from patients for her mother’s alleged funeral.
