student perspective
feature
by Richard Low
A
As I enter my fourth year of dental school, I'm realizing how much I don't know. Like
many students I hope to someday place implants, do molar RCTs and remove impacted
thirds. Unfortunately I haven't had as many opportunities as I would like to practice
these procedures while in school. While many CE courses teach these skills, the CE
courses aren't by your side when cases go wrong. If you don't have someone to bail you
out, these learning experiences can come at the expense of the patient. As new dentists,
how can we safely expand our scope of practice without endangering our patients or
getting in over our heads?
There are many general practice residencies (GPRs) and advanced education in general
dentistry (AEGD) programs that promise to expand the skills and confidence of new grads.
Yet some of these programs fail to deliver or end up being just a fifth year of dental school.
One Townie shared this horror story:
I attended a GPR where there was only a part-time director that made the program a nightmare. [I was one of] two residents and when we were on call in the ER, we would get called three
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