lab work

[rcmonkeypie]

Hi, everyone?


I have a question for you all. Does your school require you to do all the lab work or does the school sent all the lab work out? I guess this apply particularly to third year and forth year students. What are the pros and cons about it?

thanks!

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[ItsGavinC]

We will do no lab work when in the clinics. Our clinic building (which isn't built yet) will have a commercial lab within it that will be under contract to do all our work.

When it comes to labwork in the pre-clinical scenario, we *might* do one of something, but that is up in the air right now.

Being experienced at how the lab operation runs lets gives you insight as to what it takes to make a perfect crown, or anything else.

I don't see a point, however, to having students slave over this day in and day out, since in their real practicies that situation would NOT be the norm.

Then again, we're talking about Arizona, and there's a great chance that we won't even be learning amalgam.

 

[UBTom]

Originally posted by rcmonkeypie
Hi, everyone?


I have a question for you all. Does your school require you to do all the lab work or does the school sent all the lab work out? I guess this apply particularly to third year and forth year students. What are the pros and cons about it?

thanks!

My school: The student is responsible for preliminary labwork-- For fixed prostho, we have to pour up, ditch and mount the dies on articulators before sending it to the lab. For complete denture cases the student is responsible for setting the teeth and waxing up dentures to final contours and the lab will process the flasking. For RPD cases the student is responsible for surveying the casts so the labs can make the frameworks, after which the student sets the teeth and waxes up the dentures before sending it to the lab. It does get to be a drag.

At NYU where my sister went to school: My sister's classmates actually hired out the preliminary labwork (pouring the dies, setting teeth, etc.). She couldn't afford it though so she did those preliminary lab work on her own.

The trend does seem to be eliminating more and more labwork from the curriculum.. The rationale is that dentists don't do much labwork themselves anymore (including the preliminary stuff). But I think it's still a good idea for the dentist to know something about it-- Otherwise the dentist won't be able to tell what's properly-done and what is not in the returned labwork.

 

[c132]

UBTom I agree. For sure in removable pros. taking an impression and sending it off for a set of dentures sounds good, but if you never go through the hell of setting teeth and festooning, and the da.. curve of spee and wilson, oHhhhhhhhhh I am getting upset thinking about it!!!!

For gold, we do all the wax up and castings, but for all pfm or captek etc.. we send them to the lab. I would love to learn to do porcelin myself though!

Do you guys have a set number of operative cards to fill? They are getting away of having a set number here, just what comes through the screening, a lot of people were getting bad clinic grades because they didn't have enough inlays and onlays to do.

 

[UBTom]

Hey C132,

Yep, we do have requirements for the various disciplines to fill... Last year when I was a junior, we had to fulfill a total of 180 points of operative. A 1-surface restoration is worth 4 points, 2-surf is worth 6 points, 3-surf is worth 8, and 4-surf/core buildup is worth 12. So to satisfy that requirement for 180 points means I had to fill A LOT of cavities.

This year (my senior year), we have to fulfill a total of 260 points of operative. I don't think there are that many cavities in all of Western New York to fill!

Hopefully I can come close to it when April rolls around... I'm praying that I can satisfy these damn requirements so I can graduate on time!

Senior-year requirements for the other disciplines: We have to do at least 4 arches of removable in our senior year (including at least one completely edentuolous case), and at least 8 units of fixed (including at least 1 bridge). At least 3 perio cases, 1 perio surgery, and at least one molar endo.

Right now I'm hurtin' for removable.. Completely-edentulous patients are harder to find in WNY than I ever imagined. Meanwhile the school keeps assigning perio stuff to me, which I already have wayyy too much of. Grrrr.

 

[c132]

Our senior year we are to take a full semester to do a rural rotation. I am looking forward to that! Around here, there is a lot of dentures going out, but less operative. People just get them jerked even if its a simple class 1. At first this is one of the things that pissed me off. I guess that some people don't truely value teeth, like us!!!!

 

[DcS]

At UNC we do most of the lab work in a similar fashion that you guys do Tom.

It's funny that you guys have requirements per year. For us, basically we have requirements that must be met pretty much by the end of our 4th year. There are certain levels that are guidelines to judge how far your progress is, but nothing concrete I think that HAS to be done by a certain year. While this may sound good, it can come around to bite you in the end if you don't get a lot of work early on in soph. year.

 

[c132]

Here they are talking of "switching" to a work related grading system. There is only 43 of us in our dental class, so they have "meetings" in a sense to talk of each students ability. I would love to see them totally adopt this idea for that would relieve a lot of stress on finding certain patients. Also it has been found that say after you have your 150 points in operative and a new person comes in, not as much detail will be put towards them, because it doesnt count for jack squat.