Block System or Comprehensive Method

[smile_doctor]

Hi!

I would appreciate if some of you could tell me if your school uses the "Block" system for clinical exposure (i.e., they teach how to diagnose/treat/prevent one type of oral concern in the preclinic and then you see only patients with that particular pathology in clinic before moving on to the next "block" of instruction) or the comprehensive method (you learn how to diagnose/treat/prevent virtually all pathologies in the preclinic before being exposed to the clinic in which you provide comprehensive patient treatment of all oral concerns).

What do you think the advantages & disadvantages are to your particular method of clinical exposure?

Thanks,

Smile_doc

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[UBTom]

Here at my school it's a mixture of both.

During normal clinic hours we are expected to do operative, fixed, removable, endo, etc.. But for disciplines such as pediatrics, radiology, oral surgery etc., those are done on week-long rotations.

Advantage of doing comprehensive care is of course being exposed to many situations you can learn from, and you learn how to do comprehensive treatment planning to properly sequence the care a patient is supposed to receive.

Disadvantage is that depending on luck you may see very little action for some disciplines (for example, patients who need full dentures are kind of hard to come by here at my dental school).