Overlap between med and dent (UBC)

[westcoastbestcoast]

Undergrad at UBC here and I've heard that med and dent students share classes for first and second year? Is that true? Just something I've just been curious about haha. Do the med and dent programs share any other similarities?

And I see med students have these matching backpacks - they don't look particularly nice but its soooo cool how they're all matching in colors and have their grad class on it. Do dentistry students get matching backpacks as well? Or something similar?

 

 

Thanks

[Super Nova]

Yeah that is true! Although the curriculum is not exactly the same. Dents will still have portions and classes without the meds and vice versa! Because when else would you work in the simulation lab. As for backpacks, unfortunately not. Each school is different though and they may get some sort of class swag but its not like the meds where every student in canada gets the same backpack. I wish!

[thank4]

They used to have classes together in the first two years. But dent is their own faculty now and Med started the spiral curriculum so it’s separate now.

[Zaandrei.]

Can confirm; spoke with a fellow colleague from UBC at a conference.^^ It's not shared classes anymore; more focused curriculum.

[jillsmiles]

And from what I've heard from UBC Dent grads this is a plus for future dents - while general med background knowledge of course necessary component of every dent school -  this used to be taken to the extreme at UBC - a question of priorities and where best to spend the dent's time during those first two years - more dentistry-specific anatomy etc would be much more beneficial in my opinion

 

[maxfacs]

On 2017-10-22 at 2:20 PM, jillsmiles said:

And from what I've heard from UBC Dent grads this is a plus for future dents - while general med background knowledge of course necessary component of every dent school -  this used to be taken to the extreme at UBC - a question of priorities and where best to spend the dent's time during those first two years - more dentistry-specific anatomy etc would be much more beneficial in my opinion

 

I can confirm that the curriculum has since shifted from a combined curriculum to a dental only curriculum. The above is the type of thinking that has always driven me insane about many graduates from UBC. Yes, it's true that certain members of the class lack experience in certain aspects of dentistry - endo being the most significant. That being said, bread and butter dentistry in 3rd and 4th year of the old curriculum was more than sufficient. At the end of the day a resto is a resto and a crown is a crown. If your hand skills weren't good enough, you always have the option of practicing and improving your proficiency in sim. If you wanted a real patient, you could simply request more (the downside being that you would have to triage and treatment plan them). At UBC, most of your clinical experience really is what you make of it. Motivated students had average clinical exposure. The problem is that many of my classmates expected everything to be handed to them. Many students simply weren't willing to put in additional time once they got out of sim. When cases weren't handed to them, they looked for something to blame - the scapegoat was typically the med curriculum. The exit interviews were actually hilarious, people complained about literally everything in the curriculum.

Instead of learning proper basic and medical sciences these days, they have an oral surgeon and a general dentist teaching a majority of the med curriculum. While both are very knowledgeable, the current students are missing out on an amazing opportunity to learn from experts in each field.

Dentistry becomes a monotonous task after a while. You will always gain this experience during your clinics, GPR, or in private practice. It's quite sad that there is a lack of thirst for knowledge this day and age. If you think about it, it's quite scary .... just read up on some of the complications that have resulted in deaths in dentistry in the past few years. These are usually easily preventable with a simple understanding of physiology, pharmacology, and common sense. 

Anyways that's a rant and a half. 

Put simply, I believe you should consider didactics to be equally important to clinical exposure. The OMF guys will whip you into shape for pertinent medical issues relating to surgery, however the rest of the didactic curriculum is sorely lacking.

PS. your increased clinical exposure in the first year is essentially learning how to wipe down ops 2x at blazing speed where everyone is sweating and also doing a few basic class I's