Residency Curriculum
About
Our residents and faculty treat both private patients and indigent patients. Also, some of our residents volunteer their time at the free clinics and state public health facilities, but this is not a requirement of the program.
A resident’s private patients receive comprehensive care; you provide all the care for these patients, except for routine hygiene services. Your private patients tend to remain your private patients, but special care patients might be shared among the staff.
We have four full-time dental hygienists to provide this care, though on occasion we do some hygiene ourselves.
Almost all laboratory work is sent out, but you will perform some minor laboratory procedures. We do not expect you to spend your time doing the laboratory work you did in dental school.
Patients We Treat
- Head and neck cancer patients
- Inherited coagulopathy patients
- Organ transplant patients
- Acquired bleeding disorder patients
- Cardiac disease patients
- Renal dialysis patients
- HIV patients
- Handicapped patients
Resident Experience
These are the major areas and experiences to expect a resident finishing our program to take with him/her. We would expect a second year resident to develop more in this respect by virtue of a longer time period spent in the program (Some implant treatment plans, for instance, take a while to implement from surgery to restoration). If you plan to practice in a rural environment with limited options for specialty referral, all of this will be valuable to you.
On the other hand, even if you plan to practice in a more urban area, the competition between you and the GPs and specialists in the area will make it necessary for you to be able to treat as many different situations as possible to remain competitive. As a rule, patients would rather be able to get as many different kinds of treatment done in one place, as opposed to having to go to different locations. The more services you can offer and patient types you can treat in your practice, the more attractive your practice will be.
Patient Care We Offer
- Medically compromised patient dental care
- Hospital dentistry
- Emergency dentistry
- Sports dentistry
- Dental implants
- Fixed and removable prosthodontics
- Cosmetic dentistry
- Oral surgery
- Periodontics
- Endodontics
- Orthodontics
- Pedodontics
- Sedation dentistry
Teaching
Some of our residents are interested in the pursuit of part or full time faculty positions in Dentistry. Opportunities periodically present themselves for clinical studies originated by other departments. There is ample patient material for publication, if that is a desirable facet in terms of portfolio development for an eventual faculty position. The second-year resident mentors their first-year counterparts, and all residents have the opportunity to teach dental school externs rotating through our program, undergraduate interns, and medical residents in the Health System.
We have the second year residents organize formal lectures to allied patient care facilities in the hospital, such as Student Health.
Even if you do not plan to “teach” formally as a faculty member somewhere, you will do some informal teaching in terms of your own office staff (esp. new employees), local dental study clubs, local hygienist associations, etc., so this represents a good opportunity to begin to develop the skills to do so.