Community-based Facilities: Effective Learning Environments

The Dental Pipeline schools revised – and continue to revise – their curricula to support a 60-day capstone senior year clinical experience in community-based health centers, private practices, and other facilities dedicated to treating underserved populations. Rotations to off-site locations have two major objectives in dental education:

1. To broaden students’ sensitivity and knowledge so that practitioners can offer “humane, comprehensive, and more equitably distributed (care) to every segment of the community, no matter how ethnically, economically, or psychosocially diverse.” ¹
2. To provide students with the opportunity to treat patients in busy patient-oriented facilities where they can enhance their clinical skills.

Coursework Optimizes Off-site Experiences
Preparation in the early years of the curriculum is critical for students to acquire a deep appreciation for the needs of vulnerable populations that they will use later in clinical rotations. The 2003 ADEA President’s Commission² on improving Americans’ oral health recommended that schools improve their curricula as well as providing off-site experiences. It also recommended that the Commission on Dental Accreditation raise its standards to strengthen existing standards addressing cultural competency so that students are better prepared to provide oral health services to diverse populations.

Each of the Dental Pipeline schools is at a different point in examining and developing their curricula. Their efforts include a curriculum overhaul that supports the goals of the Dental Pipeline program, a course-by-course review of content, faculty training for off-site education, and developing criteria to evaluate student cultural competence skills.

1. Dworkin SF. “Behavioral Sciences in Dental Education: Past, Present and Future.” Journal of Dental Education, 45:692-698, 1981. A classic review of the inclusion of behavioral sciences into the dental curriculum, Dworkin discusses the curriculum in terms of the “psychosocial era.” The behavioral domain includes communication, behavioral modifications and organizational psychology skills while the social domain is for the student to learn and become an effective member of the health delivery system, understand the distribution of dental disease including the inequities of access to health care.
2. Improving the Oral Health Status of All Americans: Roles and Responsibilities of Academic Dental Institutions -The Report of the ADEA President’s Commission. Washington D.C: ADEA Center for Educational Policy and Research, March 2003. This Report reviews the Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health in the context of Dental Education. It discusses guiding principles for Academic Dental Institutions in contributing to improving access to acre for vulnerable populations as a social commitment to U.S. recommendations. The Report makes eight recommendations for preparing students to provide oral health services to diverse populations, all of which are pertinent to the Dental Pipeline Project.