first 2 years with med students

[Guest richie2003]

Any of you guys from schools that integrate dents and med students for the first 2 years? If so, what's it like? Advantages or disadvantages of such programs?

 

Thanks.

[Guest bcdentalgirl]

I personally really like it. While our dent class is pretty close and there are a lot of issues relating to being a dental student that we share, we also have the opportunity to mingle with the med class and get their perspective on things as well as make friends outside our little world. The meds are a great bunch and I'm glad to get the opportunity to work with them. Hope that makes sense...I'm a bit tired.

 

Downsides are what you might expect since we're the minority: dental perspectives are sometimes overlooked, guest speakers or even profs might address us all as med students (eg. "you'll probably all experience this in rotations"...etc. no big whoop).

 

The faculty is doing a great job of trying to address any problems we have. They are really open to suggestions and ways that we can mold the program to our needs. For instance, we have a class, Clinical Skills, which is pretty much basic clinician/patient communication right now, but there are special issues in dentistry which may not get addressed enough for some of us. Some of the tutors are aware of this and trying to organize some Clinical Skills sessions for the dents.

 

I would say that the benefits far outweigh the costs.

[Guest toothy jr]

I see a pretty obvious disadvantage... It's well and good to be picking up detailed and comprehensive knowledge about physiology/pathology/anatomy, but meds students have residency after their 4 years and we do not. The way I see it, the less didactic material we learn the more practical exposure we get and the more prepared we will be for the real world. My school has a "lite" curriculum but I still think more fat can be trimmed.

[Guest Skippybarf]

don't avoid the issue... spending the first two years of DENTAL SCHOOL with medical school is a joke to the education dental students should receive. How ridiculous is it? you learn pretty close to nothing that is relative to what you will be doing for the rest of your life.

 

Uof T kicks your @#!!@ and stop pretending everything is OK that you spend two years with med students. I have heard terrrible things from that and i would NEVER attend a school such as that.

 

no offense to anyone personally.

[Guest LestatZinnie]

skippybarf:

 

that's sort of what i thought when i first started the program, that studying medicine is a waste of time. however i attended this presentation by an oral surgeon (MD/DMD from harvard), who basically told us that dentistry is not limited to private practice (which is what 80-90% of people will do). There are opportunities to go into anaestheisia (sp?), pathology, etc in the medical/hospital settings if you so desire. he stated many dentists have made the cross over to head major departments in hospitals, provided they have good medical background other than the teeth.

 

So, if your goal is set on private practice the medicine stuff will be pretty useless. However, if you plan on branching out, then having the DMD rather than DDS will be of advantage to you.

 

initially i resented spending time with med students. but now i see a point, since my education will prepare me for better cross-over into dental-related medical fields should i find private practice not my cup of tea

[Guest bcdentalgirl]

Since I have never attended another dental school, I can't speak as to whether the program I'm in is any better or worse than yours, Skip. All I can say is that I'm happy, having a good time, meeting great people and I'm going to be a dentist in 4 years.

 

I'm glad for you that you feel so strongly that your program kicks my butt. You must be very proud.

[Guest toothy jr]

While I agree with skippybarf that having a combined first 2 years is a disadvantage (and perhaps a cost-cutting scheme) I wouldn't describe it as "terrible". After all every graduate writes the NDEB and as far as I know not one school is having a huge number of failures. As bcdentalgirl points out everybody comes out a dentist, and my personal preference (if it were my choice) would be McGill or Dal for the low tuition cost.

 

LestatZinnie, taking subjects with meds students is but one method of getting a foot into the "non-private-practice" world. You can also pick up general med knowledge when you get into the OMFS MD/DDS program (i.e. at Dalhousie) or a Dental Public Health specialty. There is no dental anesthesia specialty recognized in Canada. A good way to participate in dental basic science is to start off doing research in undergrad dents, and then onto a thesis project during specialty years (MSc not dip).

[Guest predent2003]

Personally, I don't quite like the idea of doing first two years with Med students. Not that I think it's useless, it's because I can't wait to do dentistry!!

 

I think that there are obvious advantage for doing the first two years with med. UBC and Mcgill offers "Doctor of Dental Medicine", so it should be quite obvious that medicine theories are pretty important for the schools. I personally know a professor who's teaching anatomy to med and dent students who has a DDS behind his back. At one point he was also the vice president for UBC, and the most important thing is, he is enjoying what he's doing.

 

Another issue is that doing dent all 4 years means that people will have more clinical exposure and practice. However, these will come once you get into the real world. A UofT graduate might have a slightly better hand skills than a McGill graduate upon graduation, but in a short run, they'll all be the same. And the McGill graduate will also have a more rounded education.

 

Anyway, that's just my opinion. As bcdentalgirl said, I am happy for you that you think your school kick my school's ass.

[Guest BBB]

DMD doesnt mean that students study with meds for the first two years, and vice versa for DDS.

 

For example, UofS (Saskatchewan) offers DMD without med courses/PBL, while UofA offers DDS with med courses and PBL.

 

Anyway, if all the med schools in Canada have adopted PBL, then the trend is likely to follow in dentistry soon or later. There must be something about PBL that works, otherwise med schools won't use that format.

 

It's getting more and more attention to people that a competent dentist has to not only do a good job in surgical procedures, but also be able to treat whole person instead of that tiny oral area. That's why the school think students have to be trained as a dental clinician instead of dental technician.

 

In real world, chances are that when you see the patient, you encounter the problems first, then carry out the diagnosis and/or search for relevant info, and finally formulate the treatment. The PBL aims to mimic the real world situation. At the end, the students learn to research for info more effectively and critically (at the same time they're exposed to new scientific data) so that they can integrate the info in the treatment. Scientific info is constantly changing, and if you can't keep up with the current data, then you're not gonna offer an effective and efficient treatment plan for the patient. On the other hand, the didactic training has a major disadvantage that once you graduate, you're likely to find that half of the info you learn in the class is wrong (ie, not up-to-date). Even worse, you don't know which half is wrong! Textbooks are a great resource for background info, but the info is usually 10 years behind the current knowledge. Thus, to be a competent health professional, you have to search for foreground info to keep your knowledge current. For example, when students/physicians want to treat asthmatic patient, the first thing that usually comes to their mind is beta-adrenoceptor agonists, but not many people know that magnesium sulfate (which costs far less) is equally effective! This finding is quite recent. The same goes to thiazide in treating hypertension, compared to expensive ACE inhibitors and beta agonists..

 

Another example. If a patient with swollen neck under the cheek comes to see you in your dental clinics, what should you do? What tests/procedures do you need to take to eliminate that the cause is not due to dental problems? I hope you don't just prescribe antibiotics to the patient and that's it.

 

Another advantage to study with meds is that you get to know your fellow med students. Chances are they may refer their patients to you! For example, signs associated with oral cancer are usually detected in physcian's office first. So, if the physician knows you, he will probably refer the patient to you.

 

In UofA, although we study with meds, we also take some dental courses. In the first year, we have dental anatomy (we actually use tools to reconstruct/carve various teeth) and oral biology, and some dental office shadowing during the winter/spring term, and additional dental courses (dental materials, x-ray,...etc) in the summer. I don't know what dental courses we'll take in the 2nd year, because I'm still in my first year.

[Guest LestatZinnie]

hi BBB

 

thanks for your insightful comment and i agree with your comment that dentists of the future should be 'clinicians' rather than 'technicians'.

 

As I mentioned, I resented studying medicine when I first began dental school, but I see the relevance now, such that even if schools are just doing it for cost reasons i'm not as annoyed by it. In fact, the aforementioned MD/DMD from harvard applauded my school's de-emphasis on doing stuff like wax-ups, which is a job for dental technicians anyway. (any schools do wax-ups in canada?)

 

With increasing advances and linkage between oral health and rest of the body, having a good basic understanding of the body is important, imo. At least if my patients ask me some questions about dyspnea or arrythmia or whatever, I will have the medical knowledge to answer them rather than just refer to their family doc

[Guest BBB]

UofA dental anatomy is wax-ups, but that course is only two-credit course. The main focus of the course is to get to know the dental morphology: cusp positions, roots, occlusal surfaces,...etc. Our classmates love doing wax, although it's not that important for dentists nowadays (with cad-cam, I mean).

 

Another advantage to study with meds is that the medical cirriculum is divided into "blocks". Each block constitutes a course; eg, Triple I's, Endocrine, CPR, GI, Neuro, Onco...etc. We take one block at a time. Once the block is done, we write the final exam for the block; some blocks also have midterms. This means we don't have many final exams simultaneously at the end of each term. One at a time. Some blocks require knowledge from previous blocks and build on your knowledge, so you have to integrate all the info you've learned.

 

I'm not sure if the didactic schools have many final exams at the end of each term. I'm curious.....

[Guest toothy jr]

wax-ups do have their importance... doing them gives you a practical understanding of how static and dynamic contacts are made, when excursive movements cause interference etc. At my school we have a minor wax component in first year and then have to wax them up for all crown/bridge work during clinic. No cad/cam will do as good a job at imitating the nuances of adjacent teeth, and the "garbage-in, garbage-out" principle suggests we should send in well-designed casts to the lab to guarantee(?) high quality prostheses will come back. It may also be apparent to you that prosthodontists love wax because it is their nature

 

I suppose my school is "didactic", and yes we have killer amounts of exams in may. 2nd year is the worst in terms of numbers, and 3rd year is equally bad because we juggle the dozen exams with clinic. And if you are like me and subscribe to the "cram and flush" philosophy you learn nothing