New Educational Settings

Being part of an educational team in a modern dental college provides significant rewards psychologically both from the immediate experience and in knowing the long-term benefit to the students and generations of patients. The daily experience of not only teaching, but also continually learning in the process, is particularly valuable and will likely affect your own perception of your practice and chosen profession. Every lecture, seminar, or clinical experience has embedded in it new concepts and experiences, providing an exciting opportunity to continue to grow.

Dental hygiene education programs offer clinical education in the form of supervised patient care experiences. Many dental hygiene programs are integrated within dental schools providing opportunities for dentists to act as faculty. Review the resource page for a full list of dental hygiene programs in the United States.

Many dental colleges serving mostly rural states have established clinical facilities in rural locations to augment access to care for geographically underserved areas. First among these are dental college directed satellite clinical facilities, which are many and varied. A few of the traditional and also the newer colleges have established satellite clinics where students are rotated (ex. Lutheran Medical Center). Several hospital programs operate off-site clinics at significant distances from the sponsoring institution and conduct didactic training via the web for lectures and even interactive live video seminars.

A Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) is a community health center that has been designated by the federal government by adhering to regulations pertaining to the scope and quality of health services provided to anyone, regardless of ability to pay. Community health centers provide high quality health care to the underserved and uninsured. Nationwide there are over 1,200 community health centers. These community health centers offer “one-stop shopping”—primary and preventive health care visits, lab services, dental and mental health services and case management. They are conveniently located, coordinated and tailored to meet the patient’s needs. FQHCs focus on those families who are working, but are not offered health care coverage or their share of the premiums is unaffordable. FQHCs serve all races, ages and walks of life. Nearly one-third of their patients are women and one-third are children

Approximately 2% of the current dental workforce provides care within FQHCs with 69% of health center dentists participating in organized dentistry. In 2009, the U.S. Congress determined that federally supported health centers (FQHCs and “Look Alikes”) may contract with private dentists to provide dental services to health center patients in the dentists’ private offices. This determination resolved controversy over the allowability of this practice, thereby encouraging adoption of contracting as an important approach to increasing dental care for underserved populations. Health centers understand the importance of oral health as an essential component of primary health care and strive to integrate oral health into general health. New graduates looking to build their own private practices could work part-time within health centers, securing loan repayment while gaining experience within an interdisciplinary approach to patient care.

Dental residency programs have been established within community health centers. These partnerships and innovative educational
 models provide a service-learning environment that benefits the dental trainees and the community. These programs offer full-time, part-time and voluntary positions for dentists interested in teaching residents. Many of these faculty members also own and run private practices, hold faculty positions at prestigious universities and dental schools, and are actively involved in dental associations and government-appointed policy-making boards.

To continue to enlist dedicated and highly renowned specialists, some of these programs offer faculty appreciation initiatives such as loan repayment programs, faculty development and tuition for advanced degrees.

New models are utilizing a mentored one-to-one approach in approved private offices which have proven to be ethical, active and community oriented. Students in some dental colleges are almost exclusively educated in their clinical experiences in these carefully selected offices. One recently opened college of dentistry rotates students to community health centers in four different sites in the state, thereby meeting their stated goal of creating community health oriented practitioners.

Continuing education is being distributed to more easily accessible sites including local alumni study clubs, and to a wider geographic audience through online courses. Experienced clinicians are in demand in all of these new settings. The need for educators in all of these settings is magnified by the dearth of experienced general practitioner role models and mentors.