How many patients?

[dentalaee]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hi all,

I am a pre-dent applying this cycle. So far, I had 3 interviews and one more coming up before pre-dec. During my interviews, I realized that the daily number of patients treated by the 3rd and 4th years were different from school to school. I am not looking to specialize or doing residency. Therefore, I'm trying to maximize the opportunity developing speed in dental school.
So, my question is how many patients per day did you guys treat in dental school? And, did you feel you were ready to go when you graduated?

Thanks

 

[browncrack]

typical dental school appointments that happen in the dental school run about three to four hours in length. If you get assigned to a clinic outside the school then appointment schedules match that clinic's schedule. Inside the dental school, this maxes out at two appointments per day. Depending on what type of treatment you have and how available your patients are, the actual number of patients at any instance in time varies. Patients come and patients go. If you have too many patients, you won't be able to see them all often enough to finish them up. If too few, then your clinic days may not be fully scheduled.

 

[Streetwolf]

In 2nd yr at SB we start with 2-4 patients on our roster. It goes up gradually until it hits about 10-14 in July.

In 3rd yr we start with however many patients we had at the end of 2nd year (usually 10-14). In the first month it should go up to about 20. By the end of the year I'd guess it's somewhere near 30.

I hear in 4th year it goes up to about 40-50.

Any given day we see 1 patient per 3 hour block. If it's a quick prophy we could do it in 1.5 hours and potentially see 2 patients in a session. Depends on how fast you've gotten and how simple the case seems to be.

A big reason why appointments end up taking so long, aside from lack of experience, is that it can take forever to find a faculty to come over and check your work.

 

[SugarNaCl]

At VCU, we see 2 patients/day... one 9am - 12pm and one 2pm - 5pm. Not very good for increasing speed. You can do a residency before you get a job to pick up the pace. Our patient pool is about 30 pts 3rd year and 50 patients 4th year.

Good luck.

 

[Masseter]

2 patients/day in mtl too.

9h-12h
13h30 - 16h30

 

[Regmata]

At Buffalo we have 2 clinic sessions per day, 3 hours in length each. If you are 100% that you can get it done, you can see more than 1 patient per clinic period. This doesn't happen too often 2nd or 3rd year though. It is more likely that you are trying to complete multiple procedures on one patient during the alloted time.

My patient family is not as large as some of these other guys, probably have 15-20 as a fall semester 3rd year. However, my patients have a lot of dental needs and I manage to stay booked out a month in advance. Our patient families will likely be in the 40-50 range as 4th years as well though.

In dental school it is likely not the number of appointments per day that will limit what you can get done, it will be your skill and faculty availability. This isn't always a bad thing though...you may not think so now, but after 3 years of busting your hump in school it isn't always a bad thing to only be busy for half a clinic session and then get to sneak out the back door, especially on a Friday.