Curriculum, Does your school teach to NBDE I, is there JUNK in your school?

[la690]

just wondering what your school has for classes.
Are there many classes teaching material that are not on the boards?
Are we wasting our time and can we change it for the new student or for us in the future?
Are the didactic classes through a medical school or is the dental school its own entity...?

I plan on doing dentistry NOT research in biochemistry, the kidney or neurosurgery... Do I need the depth that is being taught for NBDE I

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[HupHolland]

You need to know the info on NBDE to pass the exam. Plain and simple.

Not sure if you've realized this, but at the end of your 4 years of dental school you will have the letters DR at the beginning of your name. That requires you to have a base of biomedical knowledge. If you're interested in going into dentistry just to restore teeth without considering the patient as a human, then I suggest becoming an auto mechanic.

Hup

 

[la690]

This may apply to non-case based / PBL schools

It seems we are memorizing lots of facts with out clinical correlations.
I can tell you all about metabolism and each enzyme substrate and cofactors involved in all the reactions but I cannot tell you one thing about diabetes...

There is a def disconnect. There should be integration of cases / clinical correlation
We do not need to learn the history behind the findings and the finest details to everything.

My opinion if it is not on the boards or if it is not clinically relevant why bother us with it if we will mostlikely forget it by the time we do have that DR in front of our name.
Ask a practicing dentist to ID the structures of a histological section of the brain, or kidney... or maybe a gram stain of TB. or maybe ask a 4th year...

I just wish there was a more efficient way to do it, get it all covered and take the NBDE maybe after the 1st year, some schools do it. concentrate on the quality not the quantity.

 

[HupHolland]

well, we take NBDE after 1st year at Maryland. I admit there is a lot of stuff (and by a lot, I mean almost all) that I forgot after I took NBDE. However, when it comes up again, I've seen it before and generally remember it for future use.

If you're memorizing enzymes but are not getting the big picture, then something is wrong. The big picture is what matters. Knowing what to do when a patient comes in with diabetes and being able to determine if it is controlled or uncontrolled is important.

I've accepted the fact that inefficiency is inherent in dental school education. I wish there was something we could do about it, but the effort it would take is honestly not worth my time.

Hup

 

[PSU SHC 414]

This may apply to non-case based / PBL schools

It seems we are memorizing lots of facts with out clinical correlations.
I can tell you all about metabolism and each enzyme substrate and cofactors involved in all the reactions but I cannot tell you one thing about diabetes...

There is a def disconnect. There should be integration of cases / clinical correlation
We do not need to learn the history behind the findings and the finest details to everything.

My opinion if it is not on the boards or if it is not clinically relevant why bother us with it if we will mostlikely forget it by the time we do have that DR in front of our name.
Ask a practicing dentist to ID the structures of a histological section of the brain, or kidney... or maybe a gram stain of TB. or maybe ask a 4th year...

I just wish there was a more efficient way to do it, get it all covered and take the NBDE maybe after the 1st year, some schools do it. concentrate on the quality not the quantity.

Out of curiosity... what school are you at?

 

[DCRedskinsRule]

You need to know the info on NBDE to pass the exam. Plain and simple.

Not sure if you've realized this, but at the end of your 4 years of dental school you will have the letters DR at the beginning of your name. That requires you to have a base of biomedical knowledge. If you're interested in going into dentistry just to restore teeth without considering the patient as a human, then I suggest becoming an auto mechanic.

Hup

AMEN. I'm so tired of people whining about crap. If you want to only drill preps and cut crowns, work in a lab tech. If you want a DDS/DMD, then try learning how to become a doctor.

 

[54807]

I was once a strong subscriber to the 'my school has lots of junk' but I am starting to realize how everything ties in. The difference between a 'boards curriculum' and a 'boards+junk curriculum' is what makes me confident to treat my patients and how their endless health problems impact my care. I feel like the NBDE is the absolute MINIMUM we need to know.

I did well on boards. Not because I'm brilliant or because my school did a great job of teaching me that material or that we had a streamlined boards curriculum. I did well solely because I will be evaluated by residencies and I wanted to have a good score. The score is meaningless beyond that. 1 more hurdle of life.

Yes, I'd say I can name at least 1 solid hour of waste per day, but that's life. The admin is running an organization/school that has hundreds of employees and students and many million dollars in assets and budgets. Not everything can be perfect and efficient. Throw in the troubles of state schools with all that oversight and rules and it would be a stressful thing...

I think it'll only be time before I realize how even more integrated everything is, and how much less 'junk' we have in our curriculum.

Although, I will continue to argue that removable prosth is junk and it will continue to ruin my Friday for only 3 more weeks.

 

[Lopyswine]

its professional school not trade school. we are learning to become the doctors of the oral cavity, not teeth carvers.

Suck it up or go work in a lab. Its people like you that give dentistry a bad name. I am so sick of having to justify our curriculum to people outside the school. I bet you can't understand why we take whole body anatomy and not just biology of the human dentition.

 

[small]

I never really feel like our professors are teaching "to the boards," but they are all aware that we will be taking this big test in less than one year from our first day of class. I feel like our best lecturers try to give is tips (like "you need to know this for my class and your professional career, but you probably won't see it on Part I") and make tests with board-style questions. These professors have also been the most difficult and adamant about us really understanding the material and related research and clinical applications. I also feel that understanding some of the research and stuff that has gone into what now "know" and study for the boards helps connect the pieces and solidify everything in my small little brain.

 

[Pyriots]

just wondering what your school has for classes.
Are there many classes teaching material that are not on the boards?
Are we wasting our time and can we change it for the new student or for us in the future?
Are the didactic classes through a medical school or is the dental school its own entity...?

I plan on doing dentistry NOT research in biochemistry, the kidney or neurosurgery... Do I need the depth that is being taught for NBDE I

Wow. I would HATE to have any healthcare practitioner treat me with that kind of mentality.

OF COURSE you need to know all that stuff. Even thinking that its not useful knowledge just goes to show that you dont have much of a background in it.

If dental school were just about passing the boards, we'd all be at Kaplan University right now.

Jeez. I'm just kind of flabbergasted. You sound like you're just looking to a "drill and fill" dentist. Heavens forbid you get a patient with any kind of preexisting medical/mental/social condition. Or you know, science ADVANCES and you have to be able to keep up.

Maybe its just me, but after grad school and taking IN DEPTH and often tedious hard science courses (yes, like 3 hours of biochem a day every day), I just felt like the world made more sense. Do you have a passion for knowledge? for treating people in pain? for the title and money?

Think about why you're doing this. Nobody is going to ask you what you got on the boards in a few years. I cant even remember what I got on my SATs. Hell by the time you take them, the boards will be pass fail anyway. so you're school only even needs to teach you about 70% of whats on them anyway. Maybe we should cut D school back to 3 years then...

 

[Pyriots]

This may apply to non-case based / PBL schools

It seems we are memorizing lots of facts with out clinical correlations.
I can tell you all about metabolism and each enzyme substrate and cofactors involved in all the reactions but I cannot tell you one thing about diabetes...

There is a def disconnect. There should be integration of cases / clinical correlation
We do not need to learn the history behind the findings and the finest details to everything.

My opinion if it is not on the boards or if it is not clinically relevant why bother us with it if we will mostlikely forget it by the time we do have that DR in front of our name.
Ask a practicing dentist to ID the structures of a histological section of the brain, or kidney... or maybe a gram stain of TB. or maybe ask a 4th year...

I just wish there was a more efficient way to do it, get it all covered and take the NBDE maybe after the 1st year, some schools do it. concentrate on the quality not the quantity.

Unfortunately, clinicians often feel themselves too "important" or "busy" to teach the hard science classes. So you get most of those lectures taught by researchers only. And they dont go in depth on the clinical relevance bc
1. they dont have the extensive first hand experience for it. So for them to talk about it would be the same as for you to read it out of a book. And them I'm sure youd be on here complaining about how researchers are pretending to have clinical knowledge.

2. YOU dont have the knowledge to really understand it that well. You're a frosh. you're still "memorizing" stuff and freaking out over board scores and such. You're not "clinically minded" yet. and no matter how much they talk about clinical relevance, you'll still just be "memorizing" it instead of understanding and EXPANDING on it because you havent had enough patient interaction to understand what "clinical" really means yet and you're sitting here talking about test scores as if they mean jack in the real world.

3. The clinical relevance to all the "extra junk" (which I've yet to find any extra junk at all in any of my lectures) becomes plain and stupidly obvious once you have enough of a background. They shouldnt have to make ALL of the connections for you. Some of it is drawn out on its own. Some of it is supposed to be you taking the initiative because youre INTERSTED in your new profession and finding out by yourself. Some of it is deliberately left out in order to draw out questions. Once you have enough background, the clinical relevance will pop out on its own. and you'll remember that and be able to apply it much better than if they just flat out "told" you.

you're never going to use histology? so just ANY ole bump or white spot in the mouth, you're going to biopsy or refer out to an oral pathologist or surgeon? you know how many oral pathologists there are in this country? barely any.

you cant really condense the quantity. there IS that much diversity among your patients. unless you only want to somehow screen an accept the top X% of "normal" patients, you do need to know this stuff. Its a real shame if you think its ok to forget it all after the boards. No, not everybody does. For the record, I do know practicing general dentists who still keep up with the literature and can still read slides. Because they have to. because we dont all end up living and practicing in service dense metropolitan areas and you're role as a dentist isn't limited to just what you want to provide for your patient.

 

[T DAT]

my school does teach Junk!
Do some people think its important..Yes, do most students think its not important..Yes.
There are classes at my school that could be taught in the clinic not by a PowerPoint presentation, but this is the easiest for the school and the teacher so it happens this way.
Definitely the way the material is presented is a good representation how the student will take it in. Say with the Citric acid cycle if we took a diabetes patient and said this and this is what wrong with this patient so this is the clinical importance of learning this material. This goes back to the previous post that Clinicians should be integrated into the science based curriculum because they could add things to our details that would help us retain the material. It all goes back to x + 5 = 10 solve for x. All the student replying, "why do we have to learn this" do you ever solve for x, well maybe in the grocery store we just did not learn how to apply it. We learned how to solve for x but did not learn how, and when to apply it. If the teacher said we have 10 cars and 5 were painted how many cars need to be painted we would have solved for x. The same principles apply. I am always the first one to walk out of a test and say, "well jumped through that hoop" I realize that I wont remember Strep pyogenes causes Ludwig's angina, and its treated by penicillin, what clinician does? about maybe 2%.. is it important to learn, yes.. because that is what education is, being educated and being professional. I do agree they need to stream line and reform the education system because to show students relevance behind what they learn to make it an applicable system not just, "gurg, and regurg" but PowerPoint has caused this. We are adding so much to our curriculum its hard to get a hands on feel for everything. Do you ever find yourself thinking of words to associate with names or others so you can remember it for the test. In this case the student is not studying for knowledge they are studying for the test because a. they don't think its relevant b. there is not enough time to study all the material. c. they will walk out of the test and forget it anyway. Will I be as good as clinician as the guy who remembers Ludwigs, yes because I will treat people right. I will be complete in my clinical evaluations, ie to catch a swollen neck (get them a broad spectrum antibiotic) lymph nodes ect, and I will have better hand skills who that nerd who cant hold his drill steady but can remember every word on his path exam. just my two sense.