Both one- and two-year programs in general practice prepare residents for independent practice. The optional second year meets the needs of residents who plan to devote some of their future professional experience to hospital dentistry.

Goals of the Program

1. Act as a primary care provider for individuals and groups of patients. This includes: providing emergency and multidisciplinary comprehensive oral health care; provides patient focused care that is coordinated by the general practitioner; directing health promotion and disease prevention activities; and using advanced dental treatment modalities.
2. Plan and provide multidisciplinary oral health care for a wide variety of patients including patients with special needs.
3. Manage the delivery of oral health care by applying concepts of patient and practice management and quality improvement that is responsive to a dynamic health care environment.
4. Function effectively within the hospital and other health care environments.
5. Function effectively within interdisciplinary health care teams.
6. Apply scientific principles to learning and oral health care. This includes using critical thinking, evidence or outcomes-based clinical decision-making, and technology-based information retrieval systems.
7. Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability, and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
8. Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.

The Clinical Experience

As an integral part of the medical center’s medical-dental team, general practice residents provide primary dental healthcare to a wide range of outpatients and hospitalized patients. Residents gain experience in oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontics, pediatric dentistry, restorative dentistry, orthodontics, endodontics and oral medicine.

Within the challenging, fast-paced hospital environment, formal rotations in plastic surgery, emergency medicine and anesthesiology build additional expertise. Residents treat cardiology, orthopaedic, radiation oncology, hematology/oncology, kidney and liver transplant and dialysis patients in the outpatient dental facility, and dental emergencies and oral and maxillofacial trauma during on-call assignments in the medical center’s emergency unit. Residents also gain experience in treating developmentally disabled patients both in the outpatient center and the medical center operating room.

Second-year residents gain specialized training in their areas of interest by managing complex medical and dental cases. They assume some teaching responsibilities for first-year residents and dental students as well as greater administrative responsibility. First- and second-year residents make presentations to faculty and residents to gain organizational and presentation experience. Lectures, seminars and extensive operating room experience add depth and substance to the resident’s development as a practitioner.