Anne Margrete Gussgard (NORWAY)

Dr. Anne Margrete Gussgard is currently an associate professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She graduated as a DDS from the University of Oslo in 1986 and worked for 15 years in the Norwegian public dental health services treating paediatric patients with odontophobia and geriatric patients. Following a move to Toronto, Canada in 2005, she completed specialty training in periodontics, including nitrous oxide and conscious sedation training, at the University of Toronto in 2012. At the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, she studied patient-reported outcomes caused by oral mucositis associated with radiotherapy of head and neck cancer, and she obtained a Ph.D. on this subject in Tromsø in 2015. Dr. Gussgard has extensive knowledge of canines, including experience in the past as a dog instructor, as a veterinary dentist practitioner for seven years and as a member of several animal-assisted therapy organizations. She and her dog Barley have completed a one-year training program in Sweden and are certified as a dog-therapy team. One ambition is to establish through cross-disciplinary research how using a therapy dog in dental clinics can benefit anxious patients and possibly reduce sedation use.