MDE 8523: Dental Medicine 15-16

Owned by mcook
Feb 05, 2015
2 min read

This is a two-week rotation split between the LVH-17th Street site in Allentown, and the LVH-Muhlenberg site in Bethlehem. Both sites support an outpatient dental clinic with a total of seven dental residents. This experience will give the student insight into understanding the systemic complications of dental disease and treatment.

Students will observe dental therapy in the outpatient dental clinics, particularly on patients who need special care due to complex medical conditions. Students may be able to participate in providing direct patient care. Part of the hands-on experience may include administration of local anesthetics and non- complicated extraction of teeth under the direct supervision of our Attending dentists. The clinical experience may also include differential diagnosis of intra-oral lesions, early detection of oral cancers, recognition of oral lesions due to the systemic administration of medications, malocclusions, oro-facial pain and temporo-mandibular joint dysfunctions.

The student will participate with the dental residents responding to inpatient consult requests from other departments. Students will learn when it is appropriate to consult with a dentist and how to respond to medical consult requests from dentists.  Students will also respond to emergency call to the Emergency Rooms along with the resident after regular clinic hours. 

In addition, the student will attend seminars on various dentally-related topics along with the dental residents.  If scheduled during the rotation, students will observe dental treatment in the Operating Room as well as IV sedation cases. 

Objectives

  1. Examine what hospital-based post-doctoral dental programs consist of. 
  2. Increase knowledge of head and neck anatomy and pathology as well as understand the ramifications of systemic disease for dental treatment.
  3. Describe the role that dental health plays in overall patient wellness.
  4. Experience the provision of some simple procedures that could be used when engaging in future medical practices, such as administration of local anesthetics and/or simple dental extractions. 
  5. Analyze the relationship between oral and systemic diseases and be able to identify how systemic disease affects oral health.

Evaluation

The attending who is present each clinic session who will provide a written evaluation to the program co-directors.  A summary of all evaluations will be presented to the student at the end of the rotation.  Evaluations will be based on:

Level of Engagement
Professional Conduct
Patient Management and Rapport
Attendance at all assigned lectures
Attendance for all on-call responsibilities