The Dental Residency program is one year and is fully accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation as part of the American Dental Association.
Dental Residency Goals
The goals for dental residents to achieve during the program are as follows:
- Act as a primary care provider for individuals and groups of patients. This includes: providing emergency and multidisciplinary comprehensive oral health care; providing patient focused care that is coordinated by the general practitioner; and directing health promotion and disease prevention activities.
- Plan and provide multidisciplinary oral health care for a wide variety of patients including patients with special needs.
- Manage the delivery of oral health care by applying concepts of patient and practice management and quality improvement that are responsive to a dynamic health care environment.
- Function effectively within the hospital and other health care environments.
- Function effectively within interdisciplinary health care teams.
- 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.
- Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability, and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
- Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.
Journal Club and Lecture Series
The Dental Residency program curriculum includes critical literature review in meetings once a week and weekly lectures on a variety of dental and business topics by local clinicians and other professionals.
Pathology
Residents attend quarterly pathology teaching sessions with a clinical pathologist at the UVM Medical Center.
Patient Care Conferences and Treatment Planning Sessions
Residents receive regular mentoring from our broad community of general dentists and specialists. Patient care conferences are held monthly. All residents attend along with the staff dentists and discuss continuity of care. Interdisciplinary treatment planning sessions occur quarterly and involve robust conversations with the attendings about some of the residents’ most complex patients.
Surgical / Family Medicine Grand Rounds
As part of an academic institution, Dental residents have opportunities to attend a variety of interdisciplinary grand round lectures.