I completely understand where you are coming from. As
@Ryxndek pointed out it is a 3-year program. Just a little background: Roseman likes to have students in the clinic working with patients even before they changed to a 3-year program. Current D2s were doing simple restorations in December or January of their D1 year (At least the ones that I've talked to).
Short Response (can skip if you are reading the long response):
Yes, we are able to do
certain restorations and feel confident about them while working with patients as D1s. We have upperclassmen & dentists who are able to help guide us while we are working with patients & performing procedures if necessary (most people have D4s guide them for the first procedure). Not a single D1 that I know has made a mistake or endangered a patient while performing a restoration. We have done some of the basic sciences (dental anatomy, anatomy, etc.) but started in sim clinic during week 2 or 3 of school.
Long Response:
For current D1s at Roseman:
When we are in the clinic yes, we are the ones doing the restorations. But there are a ton of prerequisites that must be met before we can do a certain type of procedure. Because Roseman isn't your typical 4-year program where you take the didactics the first 2 years and clinic the next 2 years I'll give some
background: Roseman is a block curriculum where you take one course at a time. So for your simple anatomy course, we took that over a 3-4 week time period & took an assessment where we needed to score 90% to pass and go to the next block. It's the same principle for when we are in the sim lab or taking a restoration course. When we took our first restoration course & SIM we specifically focused on Class I & V restorations (Class V are the easiest). Every day we are in sim we completed a class V or I restoration (some days multiple). A faculty member (dentist) graded our preps & restorations and if the faculty does
not approve of it, we need to do the procedure(s) again another day. Then, at the end of the block, we took a SIM assessment & classroom assessment where we needed to pass both with a +90% score. Once we pass that block, we are able to do those procedures in clinic. So if you pass the Restoration 1 course you can do Class I & V in the clinic.
Another thing to note about Roseman. Everything is done on teams with upperclassmen. So when you are seeing patients you are treating them on teams where you will be mainly working with D3s or D4s that are extremely helpful (One D1 paired w/one D4). As
@Ryxndek was saying,
Normally we assist the D4s with seating patients, suction, X-rays, recording perio-probing, etc.
However, every now and then there will be patients that come in that need procedures that D1s have been trained for and approved to treat patients. When these patients come in, the D3s, D4s, and attendings (dentists) are enthusiastic to ask us if we would like to perform the procedure. And we will perform it with our upperclassmen's support (the best secondary provider in the world lol).
Upper years (D2, D3, D4s) are beyond helpful at Roseman. For our first procedures, they make sure that the patient and us D1s are comfortable with performing the procedure and watch over us for every step (They ask us before the patient is at the chair). Plus we run through the procedure with them & dentist before the patient gets to the chair as well. Additionally, we get the typical clinical checks with the dentist; start check, prep check, restoration check, etc. I think everyone at Roseman feels prepared for the procedures that they perform on patients as D1s. Simply because we have done them a significant amount of times in the sim clinic and know we have support from our upperclassmen & faculty. We wouldn't perform a procedure in the clinic unless we weren't confident in what we were doing. I know many people were worried about being "guinea pigs" for Roseman's first 3-year class, but it honestly feels like they have done the transition to a 3-year smoothly. So far (almost 4 months in) there haven't been any hiccups yet, which I am pleasantly surprised about.
