Extra Mile Dental

Special Needs Dental Clinic and Home Visiting Services

Compassionate Care, Beyond the Smile

Welcome from Dr Trudy Lin – Adelaide Specialist in Special Needs Dentistry

“Thank you for supporting South Australia’s first private Specialist special needs dental clinic with home visiting services! We believe in inclusion. We believe every person is born equal and deserves access to oral healthcare. Our mission is to create an inclusive society, where every person can eat, speak, and smile, freely.

Thank you for visiting our online home – take a look around, feel free to email our team a question, and make an appointment to get started on your dental journey with us.”

The Extra Mile Dental Team

Dr Trudy Lin is one of only three Specialists in Special Needs Dentistry in South Australia and has over a decade of experience caring for people with disability, complex medical conditions, dental phobia.

Dr Trudy is supported by her Extra Mile Dental assistant and admin support team.

Maximising choice

Dr Trudy provides a wide range of options for facilitating dental care under happy gas, intravenous sedation, and general anaesthesia.

Home visiting services

For individuals who find it challenging to attend a clinic or hospital, Dr Trudy is currently the only registered specialist in South Australia offering the full scope of general dental care in the comfort of your own home – available within a 30km radius of our Special Needs clinic.

Follow Dr Trudy on Instagram

I believe in inclusion & every person is born equal. This belief has driven an over decade-long mission to build inclusive oral healthcare that welcomes people regardless of age, gender, or disability (or my preferred term, diverseability). Last year, it was surreal to reach a significant milestone alongside my wonderful team: the launch of Extra Mile Dental - SA's first private Specialist Special Needs Dental Clinic with Home Visiting services. By reimagining oral healthcare delivery, we hope to inspire more inclusion of people with diverseability across Australia. The Extra Mile Dental team & I extend heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported us. We are moved by the outpouring of encouragement since the launch & appreciate every kind word more than you may realise. Thank you to our Premier Peter Malinauskas, Emily Bourke - Assistant Minister for Autism, & their team – who were essential in making this new service a reality. We are honoured & humbled by your recognition of the importance of our cause through awarding the grant to supply portable equipment which enables us to deliver the full scope of dental services in flexible environments suiting our patients - in the comfort of their home, in residential facilities, & sedation facilities. Thank you to the incredible Windsor Gardens Day Surgery team, your compassion & empathy is outstanding, with special mentions to Amanda Cranage, Gideon Sinclair & Anne Sciacca, for enabling this new access path for general anaesthetic. Thank you to the healthcare professionals we teamed with for delivering wonderful patient outcomes: skilled anaesthetists, nurses, support workers & special mention to Dr Emilija Jensen for providing her expertise in surgical procedures. Most importantly, thank you to our patients for being the reason behind our mission, & continual source of motivation through tough days. We are committed to achieve further milestones for you in future, including access to a tertiary hospital to facilitate anaesthetic to patients with an even broader range of conditions. We celebrate this current milestone with you, in creating belonging & a safe space to receive the dental care you always deserved

I had the privilege of presenting a Masterclass on Juggling the Priorities at the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons (RACDS) 2024 Fine Edge of Dentistry Conference. It's been incredibly rewarding to see the value people attain from continuing professional development on non-clinical topics like this one.

Over the course of my oral health advocacy journey, I have come across many people who are initially shocked upon learning the impacts poor oral health can have on general health. This includes cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and lung conditions such as aspiration pneumonia - a leading cause of premature death of people with disability in Australia. After processing this information, their next reaction is that it makes a lot of sense given that our mouth serves as the gateway to the rest of our body. Let's continue spreading awareness about the importance of oral health, as healthy smiles lead to healthy lives

With only 26 registered Specialists in Special Needs Dentistry in Australia, it can often lead to specialists being placed in leadership roles early in their careers – this was the case for me and it resulted strong feelings of imposter syndrome. I am humbled to be presenting a webinar on leadership and imposter syndrome for members of the Australian New Zealand Academy of Special Needs Dentistry next week. I am fortunate to have received support, mentorship, and inspiration from many specialists in the academy. I hope to honour the generosity of my predecessors and support our current generation of specialists in their own leadership journey. In last year's webinar series I presented on Motivational Interviewing – a coaching technique to support patients with long-term behaviour change. This time, I am excited to use coaching techniques to support my fellow clinicians, as patient-centered care requires supporting the care-givers.