Here's the low down on Yale's pediatric dental residency
General Background:
Hybrid program with a strong academic and hospital presence. It’s affiliated with the Yale New Haven Hospital, which is world famous for the research, technology, and innovations in all medical specialties. It’s also affiliated with the Yale School of Medicine. So essentially, you are a Yale Medical Resident under the subdivision of dental medicine.
You have access to the entire Yale campus with your Yale ID and access to all parts of the YNN Hospital with your hospital ID. We are in our own private clinic (separate from the hospital) all 5 days and seeing patients from 8:30-4:30 (unless you are on rotation or in the OR). You see roughly 2 pts/hr except for oral or IV sedations, which are longer. The program director is INCREDIBLE and very approachable. She makes sure we are always learning and on the right track. She is also one of the few and elite oral pathologists/pediatric dentists in the country
The assistants are the BEST! They’ve been here a long time and really know how to handle the sticky situations with kids. Speaking of assistants, you always have one!
Continuity of care is something that makes our program unique. We make it a point to do that (unless the resident requests not to get that kid again lol). Most [busy] programs don’t have continuity of care so every time the pt/parent comes in, they have a different resident. There are 10 operatories. Everyone has their own operatory and assistant. There are 12 residents but 1 or 2 are always gone on rotation, OR, craniofacial, hematology/onc, etc. We have 2 full time hygienists as well
OR experience:
OR days are 3 times per week. Each time, a 1st and 2nd year go with an attending. I would approximate that we all go ~3 times per month, which is roughly 1/wk.
Sedations
We do oral sedations on Tuesday and Thursday mornings in our sedation rooms. On Tuesday and Wednesdays, OMS comes and we do our IV sedations then. Great sedation experience
Ortho experience
We have an ortho lecture every Friday morning from 8-9 and we see our ortho pts on Thurs and Fri mornings. We have several orthodontic attendings that come in and teach us. We pretty much have the leeway of doing as much or as little ortho as you want. We focus mainly on interceptive ortho unless you want to do full bond-bracket which if you are into that kind of thing, those are done on Mondays with a certain attending, ie. if you want to learn comprehensive permanent dentition ortho, Mondays are the day you can do them.
Call schedule:
We’re on call for a whole week every 6 weeks. First years get first call and second years are on second call. The second years will go in for every call with you for the first several months. After that, 1st years take the first call and will only call 2nd years as needed. The call load is hit or miss. Sometimes you can get called heavily, other times, you have lots of time to relax. It’s not a heavy/obnoxious call load in my opinion but enough to get you comfortable with taking emergencies when out in practice.
Research:
Research is sort of a big deal but you can usually just do a simple topic as long as it’s relevant and important to peds. It’s a requirement but most people get the bulk of it done second year. You get a half day off once a month during the work week to work on it but you can use that day as a personal day if needed.
Rotations:
anesthesia is one month, peds medicine is a month, craniofacial is every 6th Monday , Pediatric primary care clinic is every 6th Friday. Hematology/oncology and DART (child abuse awareness ) rotation is 2nd year. You also have a 2-week optional rotation in oral surgery if you want to improve in permanent teeth extractions.
Academic classes
During first year, we have lecture on Tuesday and Thursday morning from 7:30-8:30am. 1 or 2 times a month, we have lecture with oral surgery and GPR on Wednesday mornings. We have journal club once a month too. Fridays are ortho days so we have ortho lecture that morning. BEST PART= NO EXAMS!!! We have small quizzes after each lecture but it’s just to make sure we’re learning and paying attention.
2nd year, we have board's review lectures. And 2nd years teach the pedo review course for the first years in July/August. We are out everyday by 4:30 or 5pm and you are DONE for the day, no lingering paperwork, no computer stuff, no cleaning, no nothing. You have the rest of the day for fun, relaxation, whatever. Weekends are free too. You can say goodbye to any more intense studying etc. when you get here
of course, it is expected that you keep up with lecture material and learn
This clinic is a state of the art new clinic with a cephalometric machine, Cone beam CT, and pano which makes it super easy on our pts. We have separate rooms and operatories with doors (not open bay) and 2 fully equipped sedation rooms for IV and oral sedation. We also have a recovery room. We have an in-house nurse practitioner that does all of our H&P’s for our General anesthesia pts and can monitor for our sedations. We are part of the Craniofacial team with plastics and ENT, which are downstairs --makes it super convenient and a great resource for pts with deformities, birth defects, etc. Team/Comprehensive tx is a big deal here esp since we work closely OMS, GPR, plastic surgery, ENT, etc. The chair of our department is a board certified oral surgeon AND plastic surgeon along with our awesome program director being both a board certified pediatric dentist AND oral pathologist!
Stipend: is $62,000 and it goes up every year.
Definitely a huge plus. We also get full benefits for medical, disability, etc. they also match a percentage of your paycheck and put it into a retirement fund which is awesome. And there’s NO TUITION!
The best thing of all is that the residents and attendings are very cohesive. We help each other out so much, its incredible. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have the Yale name on your degree.
New Haven is a quirky college town well known for the best pizza and amazing seafood. There’s an area of great bars and restaurants that are full of Yale grad students. It’s a very transient young professional town full of medical residents, grad students, and law students. Pleasantly surprised on how nice it is here and how much fun it is!
