clinical requirements and competency

[jrd29]

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I am a 3rd year at UNLV. Our curriculum is set up so that we do not clinical requirements, rather we have clinical competencies. So, as a 3rd year I have 11 competencies that I have to pass. This includes a pfm, class I composite, class II amalgam, class II composite, simple extraction, etc.

When I feel comfortable doing these procedures, I sign up to complete my competency. I might feel comfortable after doing 8 crowns, while my classmate might feel competent after 1. During the procedure 2 professors examine my work and then give me a score and determine if I am competent in this procedure. The system is set up to mimic licensing boards. I was curious to see if this model is being used by any other schools.

By the way, if we pass all our competencies it doesn't mean that we don't have to go to clinic anymore. We can only miss x number of clinical sessions per year.

 

[aphistis]

I am a 3rd year at UNLV. Our curriculum is set up so that we do not clinical requirements, rather we have clinical competencies. So, as a 3rd year I have 11 competencies that I have to pass. This includes a pfm, class I composite, class II amalgam, class II composite, simple extraction, etc.

When I feel comfortable doing these procedures, I sign up to complete my competency. I might feel comfortable after doing 8 crowns, while my classmate might feel competent after 1. During the procedure 2 professors examine my work and then give me a score and determine if I am competent in this procedure. The system is set up to mimic licensing boards. I was curious to see if this model is being used by any other schools.

By the way, if we pass all our competencies it doesn't mean that we don't have to go to clinic anymore. We can only miss x number of clinical sessions per year.

We have requirements & competencies both, and our attendance requirements are set at 70% of available clinic sessions during the school year, & 50% in the summer.

 

[UConn_SDM]

Same at UConn although we call them "progress evaluations". The only things we had to do a specific number of was crown & bridge and N2O. Besides that we had 3rd and 4th year PEs for just about everything - from RPD final impression PEs to complex Ag PEs to molar endo PEs.

 

[ItsGavinC]

From DentalTown:

"I am not sure that my graduating requirements are up to par. I am a 4th year student. I feel like I am pretty good, I don't think that you need many of anything to do the job, but I feel that obviously more is better for me and my patients so I can encounter more situations/problems and learn to deal/fix/solve the situation. Anyway, here are my clinical requirements.

7 crowns
1 bridge
3 arches complete dentures
3 partials
3 removable others(immediates, interims..)
60 restorations
20 prophys
12 srp's

we have to complete treatment on 10 patients

just wondering what other students have to do?"

 

[ItsGavinC]

To start us off I'll post what I posted there:

Our clinic at Arizona has been up and running for a month now, but they've just give us our clinical requirements for the D3 year:

3 anterior endo
50 operative restorations (further broken down into classes)
6 units of removable prosth
14 units of fixed prosth
Perio/SRP on each patient as needed
Oral surgery rotation
Pedo rotation

The oral surgery and pedo rotations don't have any specific required with them, other than attendance. Students in the OS rotation are extracting 5-10 teeth each day and doing some alveoplasty, etc.

Everything is quite doable here, because we have no post-grad programs to refer out to. I have classmates who have done more than 3 RCTs in the past month alone.

Prior to advancing to D4, we have a comp. exam or two in each of the above areas (essentially doing the procedure while instructors watch without help from them).

They've said we are "competency based," but that isn't quite true. Like UNLV we get to determine when our competency exams are, but we also have to complete minimum requirements to move from year to year. Tricky lingo, eh? I wish we were doing a true competency system like UNLV is doing, but I suppose it might change in the future (everything here does).

 

[UConn_SDM]

Being competency based it's difficult to give absolute numbers but we did have a lot of competencies (a.k.a - pimp sessions). Basically you usually had to complete a number of prerequisite cases before you did your "progress evaluation". Your PE meant you did the procedure with no help from faculty (but of course it was closely monitored by the faculty) and afterward you had to sit down and pass the oral exam "pimping session".

Sometimes these pimping sessions were extensive - we had what was called a 3rd and 4th year Perio diagnoostic PE. The patient would come in the 1st appointment so you could get all the data then before their second appointment you would sit down with a Perio faculty member and discuss every aspect of the case. You had to know EVERYTHING about their medical history, social history, dental history, go tooth by tooth on the radiographs with your charting data and give all the diagnosis and prognosis for each tooth. Eventually this culminated in a discussion of the overall treatment plan (including endo, pros, opr, perio). When you were finished with that, the patient came in and the faculty member checked every single probing measurement.

When it' s all said and done I would estimate I did:
12 Crowns
3 Anterior RCTs
5 Poster RCTs
2 arches of complete dentures
2 arches of RPD
roughly 200-250 fillings on adults (100 filings in pedo)
extracted 100 teeth
35 quadrants of SPR
10 N2O cases

A bunch of PEs - they really have PE for everything including simple exo, complex exo, prepros surgery, implant experiential, biopsy experiential, 2X prescription writing, 2X N2O, class II comp, class II Ag, class V comp, class III/IV comp, complex Ag, caries risk assessment, 2X RCT, 4X SRP, 2X perio diagnostic, 1 phase I reevaluation, 2X phase II reevaluation, 2X manikin 3-unit bridges for boards, RPD final impression, complete denture final impression, a bunch of pedo PEs, and probably some I've forgotten.

Competency based evaluations I think is a good system when you have a minimum number of prerequisites for certain things and when faculty are not afraid to fail for a mediocre performance - they are not shy about this at UConn.

[edit] - a bunch of rotations through pedo, OMFS (1 week), AEGD emergency clinic, 2X oral radiology, and 3X oral medicine (1 week each).