Curriculum and Rotations

Program Mission and Objectives

• Educate general practice residents in a Commission on Dental Accreditation approved residency
• Provide comprehensive dental services
• Provide emergency dental services
• Provide comprehensive services to special needs patients through the Dentistry for the Disabled program

Goals

• Educate residents by providing hands-on experience in multiple specialties
• Teach residents to function at independent private practice levels
• Provide exposure to diversified problems of patients
• Ensure competence in the management of patients who are medically compromised, physically or mentally handicapped
• Manage patients in the hospital setting, especially those with a history of trauma
• Understand dental management as a component of “whole person” treatment
• Develop communications skills to present complex treatment plans
• Manage patients in the operating room setting
• Develop skills with varied dental materials and dental laboratories
• Design and complete a presentation
• Develop skills for implant diagnosis and treatment

Clinical Objectives

• Oral diagnosis: Medical risk assessment, treatment planning, informed consent
• Endodontics: Anterior and posterior endodontics
• Pediatric dentistry: Pulpotomy, stainless steel crown, fixed space maintainer
• Restorative dentistry: Anterior and posterior composites, amalgam
• Prosthetics: Single crowns, partial denture, complete denture, bridges, electrosurgery, implant impression, implant crown
• Practice Management: Résumé, electronic medical records
• Anesthesia and Pain control: Infiltration and block anesthesia, nitrous oxide analgesia
• Oral and Maxillofacial surgery: Asepsis principles, basic and surgical extraction, soft tissue impaction, inpatient consultation, preprosthetic surgery, soft tissue biopsy
• Operating room technique: Prep, scrub and drape, order writing, operative note dictation
• Periodontics: Periodontal charting, scaling and root planing, periodontal flap surgery, periodontal graft surgery, crown lengthening
• Implants: Implant placement, implant restoration

Facilities

The residency program is housed in a six-chair modern dental facility.

Each operatory is equipped with two monitors for use with the electronic dental record. Direct digital and phosphor plate digital radiographs are available. Digital panoramic radiographs are integrated in the Dentrix dental software program. Rotary endodontics are available in each operatory. Electrocautery units, apex locators and ultrasonic scaling equipment are easily accessible. Hospital digital radiography, electronic lab results and reports are able to be viewed from the dental operatory.

Rotations

Each resident rotates through the Emergency Department with board-certified Emergency Medicine physicians. This rotation affords dental residents an opportunity to learn about the evaluation of medical emergencies, appropriate laboratory testing and patient management skills.
An assignment to the operating room for an anesthesia rotation will involve the dental resident in pre-operative evaluation, assessment of the effects of pharmacologic agents, venipuncture technique, patient monitoring, airway management and assessment of patient recovery.

Didactic Program

An extensive didactic program expands the dental knowledge of residents on a post-graduate level. In addition to instruction in all clinical dental specialties, there is ongoing conferencing in treatment planning, practice management, literature review, care of medically compromised patients and outcomes of care reviews.
Several lecture series are held in conjunction with Internal Medicine and Family Medicine residents to broaden knowledge of research protocols, practice management, laws and ethics and clinical documentation.

Staff

Our dental facility provides an opportunity to gain experience in how a private practice functions. The staff members listed below have many years of dental experience and guide residents in their transition from dental school to the private practice setting.

Program Director - Aneta Wojcik, DDS, MA
Business Coordinator
Receptionist
Four full-time dental assistants
Two dental hygienists

Dental Services

The Division of Dentistry provides dental services in its outpatient clinic and the operating room, as well as inpatient consultations as requested by physicians.
The dental clinic is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday- Friday. At all other times, residents are on-call.