Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
I had no idea how this story was going to unfold. I’d love to say I planned it, but it was really the universe and God giving me these signs and telling me to follow them.
By Micah Mertes
For many individuals, a visit to a traditional dental clinic comes with unique, sometimes prohibitive challenges.
Some patients lack mobility due to advanced age or physical impairment. Others have intellectual disabilities, psychiatric concerns or other special needs, including Alzheimer’s disease and autism. But, like everyone else, they require dental exams, cleanings, fillings, extractions and other procedures. Serving these patients is the mission of special care dentistry.
There are only a few hundred dentists in the U.S. who have completed a residency focused on special care. The only one in Nebraska is Teryn Sedillo, DDS’14.
After graduating from Creighton’s School of Dentistry, Sedillo completed a general practice residency in special care at the St. Barnabas Hospital-Albert Einstein Affiliate in New York City. She then worked at her alma mater as a full-time associate professor of special care and geriatric dentistry for several years.
Today, she runs her own business: Dignity Dental Services, which brings compassionate dental care to individuals in their own homes or care facilities, wherever is most convenient for the patient. The company, founded by Sedillo in 2016, is entirely mobile, operating no brick-and-mortar locations.
Dignity Dental Services also partners with multiple clinics, centers and organizations in the region: Summit Dental Health, QLI, Immanuel Pathways Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), the Intercultural Senior Center, Mosaic, and other nonprofits.
Dignity Dental Services (which Sedillo more recently expanded to the franchise Dignity Dental Network) also educates professionals and students on evidence-based best practices for serving geriatric patients and those with special needs. The model is based on the curriculum she developed at Creighton.
Sedillo had always intended to be a pediatric dentist. But her residency in New York changed her trajectory.
“I received such a well-rounded education in general dentistry that I could do many things on my own that some of my fellow residents couldn’t,” Sedillo said. “So I started receiving some of the more challenging cases, more special needs adults as patients. That soon became my area of focus. About a decade later, this is the most rewarding and fulfilling career I could have ever imagined for myself.”
From the first special care patients she treated, Sedillo saw the obstacles they faced in healthcare and the inadequacies of traditional dental care models to address them.
“Special care dental patients require more time and lower reimbursement, and they face a lack of provider exposure and education in the area,” Sedillo said. “And because of this, there is such a gap in the number of special care providers vs. the number of special care patients.”
Part of her mission (and that of Dignity Dental Services) is to bring more dentists into this area of expertise through outreach, education and training. One new dentist will join Sedillo next year, becoming Dignity Dental Services’ second full-time dentist. Naturally, she’s a fellow Creighton School of Dentistry graduate.
Sedillo heard about then-student Megan Bengier, DDS’25, through the grapevine from former colleagues, including Ashley Aubry, RDH, assistant professor and director of extramural programs for Creighton dentistry.
“Megan is another you,” they told her — someone planning to go into pediatric dentistry who had discovered a passion for special care.
Sedillo and Bengier connected, and the latter rotated with Dignity Dental Services. “It was the best rotation we have ever had,” Sedillo said.
“Dr. Sedillo and her team put a little bit of everything into my rotation,” Bengier said. “I went on home visits, helped them take patients to the operating room and visited patients at different centers. I fell in love with this on day one. I just immediately felt like … this is everything.”
Before Bengier starts at Dental Dignity Services, she is completing a general practice residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which will grant her hospital privileges before she joins Sedillo.
Given the prevalence of Creighton alumni in Omaha, it’s not shocking that Bengier has already worked alongside a few Bluejays during her residency. More surprising is that one of the alumni is Sedillo’s husband: emergency medicine physician Tedd Welniak, MD, BS'07.
Sedillo and Welniak (and their three children) also run Bitter Boy Farms, a flower farm and honey-making apiary near Fort Calhoun.
“I’m Hispanic, and farming is a big part of my culture and family, so living and working here has allowed me to get back in touch with my roots, quite literally,” Sedillo said. “We have made it a very grounding, tranquil and sensory-friendly space, so we’re able to bring some of my patients here.”
The farm also serves a philanthropic purpose through Dahlias for Dentistry, where half the proceeds from the farm’s locally grown bouquet subscriptions support Sedillo’s patients who are unable to pay the full cost of services, including mobile dental clinics, preventive treatments and oral health education. One large bouquet, for instance, underwrites a full dental exam and fluoride treatment.
“The farm, our patients and the business have all come together in this beautiful way,” Sedillo said. “I’m grateful for everything that has led us here.”
The same path that led Sedillo into dentistry was also guiding her to Creighton. While growing up in Colorado, her pediatric dentist was a Creighton alumnus. She asked him a lot of questions about his job, which fascinated her. By the age of 15, she was working as a dental assistant.
Later, Sedillo moved to Kansas, where she met another Creighton dentist, Paul Kittle, DDS’75, who became her mentor. Sedillo graduated from high school early so she could work with Kittle, who cared for many pediatric patients with special needs. Another dentist, also a Creighton alumnus, told Sedillo a job would be waiting for her after she graduated from dental school.
“By this point, all signs were pointing to Creighton,” Sedillo said. “It was the only school that really pulled at my heartstrings. And then, of course, Creighton led to everything else and made it possible.
“I had no idea how this story was going to unfold. I’d love to say I planned it, but it was really the universe and God giving me these signs and telling me to follow them.”
