Top 5 Clinical Programs

[AlbinoPolarBear]

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Since we have a top 5 specializing schools thread, I've always been curious to know which schools have the best reputation on SDN for their clinical programs.

So the question is:
Which 5 schools, in your mind, will provide you with the best clinical skills straight out of dental school?

There would be more room for debate here, so let's try to keep it civil.

Tufts
UDM
Louisville
Penn
UoP

 

[UltimateHombre]

I like your list APB, i would agree with most... but mine would be (in no particular order):

Louisville
ASDOH
UDM
Temple
UOP

 

[385835]

How would you determine something like this? With specialization you had numbers as evidence, but how would I rate a school's clinical preparation?

 

[AmpedUp]

OHSU
OHSU
OHSU
OHSU
OHSU

😀

We're just that good...

 

[JBieber]

How would you determine something like this? With specialization you had numbers as evidence, but how would I rate a school's clinical preparation?

you can't. that's why these lists are bs.

 

[UltimateHombre]

you can't. that's why these lists are bs.

I think there are some indicators that can somewhat be measured. However, almost all of it is anecdotal evidence and can be discounted. But this is a list more for fun i guess.

I think certain things could certainly play a factor in clinical strength:

1. Average number of procedures (from talking to a dstudents)
2. Size of patient pool
3. Location of school (usually ghetto is a good thing)
4. If you have to schedule your own patients or not
5. Number of chairs in clinic vs. number of students
6. When your start in the pre-clinic/sim clinic? D1, D2? How many times a week?
7. # of available off site rotations
8. Availability of specialty programs (could be good or bad)
9. # of students who proceed with a GPR/AEGD after graduation
10. General reputation amongst dental community

Again, many of these things are anecdotal, but can still factor into the overall "clinical strength". Just my 2 cents.

 

[hifive]

I think there are some indicators that can somewhat be measured. However, almost all of it is anecdotal evidence and can be discounted. But this is a list more for fun i guess.

I think certain things could certainly play a factor in clinical strength:

1. Average number of procedures (from talking to a dstudents)
2. Size of patient pool
3. Location of school (usually ghetto is a good thing)
4. If you have to schedule your own patients or not
5. Number of chairs in clinic vs. number of students
6. When your start in the pre-clinic/sim clinic? D1, D2? How many times a week?
7. # of available off site rotations
8. Availability of specialty programs (could be good or bad)
9. # of students who proceed with a GPR/AEGD after graduation
10. General reputation amongst dental community

Again, many of these things are anecdotal, but can still factor into the overall "clinical strength". Just my 2 cents.

+1

11. Diversity of cases and the frequency in which they are seen

 

[UCSD6]

How the hell does UOP make this list? only a 3 yr school, can't see it preparing students better than 4yr schools

 

[AwesomeTeeth]

How the hell does UOP make this list? only a 3 yr school, can't see it preparing students better than 4yr schools

Well according to this post, UoP must be churning out the worst dentists in the country! After all, its only three years...

On a serious note, you'd be surprised how much fluff you can cut out of dental school especially the first two years. They also go to school the entire year compared to other places that have summers.

 

[goffdent]

It takes time to learn the procedures and be "clinically Acceptable" at them.. It takes easily over a year to even be comfortable working on patients with a handpiece on general operative dentistry, not including endo, surgery, prosthodontics... i just can't see 3 years leaving you very prepared. maybe competent on the procedures, but not necessarily confident or any good at them. my opinion

 

[UltimateHombre]

It takes time to learn the procedures and be "clinically Acceptable" at them.. It takes easily over a year to even be comfortable working on patients with a handpiece on general operative dentistry, not including endo, surgery, prosthodontics... i just can't see 3 years leaving you very prepared. maybe competent on the procedures, but not necessarily confident or any good at them. my opinion

Hmmm... same person as UCSD6?

Anyway... UOP goes year round and has a reputation for producing top notch clinicians. I think, just like most things in life, it's not about the amount of time put in, but using that time effectively. I think that Arthur Dugoni (whom UOP named their dental school and is father of modern dental education) and UOP just has the effectiveness down to a science.

Maybe Armorshell will bounce in and tell us about his clinical experience at Pacific.

 

[AwesomeTeeth]

It takes time to learn the procedures and be "clinically Acceptable" at them.. It takes easily over a year to even be comfortable working on patients with a handpiece on general operative dentistry, not including endo, surgery, prosthodontics... i just can't see 3 years leaving you very prepared. maybe competent on the procedures, but not necessarily confident or any good at them. my opinion

The first year and majority of the second year of dental school is didactic learning and preparing you for the boards. You don't really learn the real clinical skills until your third and fourth year. If you streamline the beginning two years and condense it into the relevant material, it will have no impact on the amount of clinical experience you gain in the end.

Being in school a longer amount of time doesn't necessarily mean you're better at what you do. Its all about what you do in the time you have.

I've turned on the bat signal for armorshell as well. Maybe he will join in and enlighten us.

 

[goffdent]

Sure, i could have crammed all my part 1 board classes into 1 year, but then i wouldn't be magically prepared to work on patients without hands on training going into my second year.. Granted, i don't know the curriculum, but at a current 29 credit/hours, 8 hours a day, i don't see how it gets done. I would be interested to know their schedule though.
Ex: you need to start out with waxing/dental anatomy which is almost a semester before you begin operative. otherise you don't know how to make teeth correctly and even know what you're calling them and their features. Then you need to learn all the operative, endo, perio, oral surgery, pedo, etc etc... beforeyou work on patients.. where do you fit that in? there has GOT to be a reason why no other schools are 3 years. (granted an extra year of tuition money is one no-brainer... i know.) just saying..

After my third year, i will have been through all the rotations, but that doesn't necessarily make me ready to be on my own. 4th year is family dentistry, where you do everything as your own dentist, but with supervision because you will still have questions.... LOTS of them

 

[destinedsirius]

As all dentists, faculty, dental students I have talked to has said... No dental school can ever prepare you fully, a lot of the learning begins after graduation when you go out into the real world. And as one dentist has said... getting a DDS degree does not mean that you know everything there is to know about dentistry, it just means that you have been award a degree that allows you start learning dentistry on your own without supervision. So it doesn't matter which dental school is the best... let's just move on from this thread.

BTW, UoP has the 6th highest number of clinical training hours.

 

[Silencio]

Bottom line is no schools fully prepare you from a clinical standpoint. You'll get more experience during your first year as an Associate than you will during 5 years of clinical practice in dental school. I mean every patient visit is like a 3-hr ordeal due to the superfluous protocols when it can be completed in private practice in 30 min. Thus after a year or two after dschool, everyone is at the same level of experience.

 

[goffdent]

the superfluous protocols are some of the essentials that current dentists don't perform but should be.... ie.. cancer screenings, smoking cessation, B.P., Drug reviews... to name a few. In a society prone to litigation to try and make a buck, you have to cover your butt like no other. And that means being a "great" and thorough clinician.

 

[Regmata]

the superfluous protocols are some of the essentials that current dentists don't perform but should be.... ie.. cancer screenings, smoking cessation, B.P., Drug reviews... to name a few. In a society prone to litigation to try and make a buck, you have to cover your butt like no other. And that means being a "great" and thorough clinician.

With a little practice, all of this takes a minute or two, hardly makes up for that other 2 1/2 hours.

 

[predent18]

Some of the responses are hilarious.
I think that you should define what a "top clinical school" is, before you ask for people to throw out their choices.
I would say some key things are:
1) Large patient pool (diversity of patients)
2) Ability to treat patient fully without referring to other departments
3) Quality hours spent in clinic
4) Different procedures you are able to perform

As far as UoP, they have a very large patient pool that is only getting bigger with the moving of the clinic to a more accessible area. There is a two month waiting period for new patients. You get more clinic hours than 90 percent of schools. You get to treat the patients without sending them to endo or some other department. If you look at the body of work that students get to do at UoP, it is very high in relation to other schools. I know of many schools where you get to do like 1 or 2 molar endo, whereas at UoP people do many early and often. People aren't going to like UoP because they only interview around 50 people out of state from the many out of state applicants, but at least stop slandering the school if you don't know anything about it. There are many good clinical schools, but rating them would be impossible because even people at the same school have a different clinical experience. Silencio is right when saying that no school will fully prepare you from a clinical standpoint, good point.

 

[katwoman1688]

Some of the responses are hilarious.
I think that you should define what a "top clinical school" is, before you ask for people to throw out their choices.
I would say some key things are:
1) Large patient pool (diversity of patients)
2) Ability to treat patient fully without referring to other departments
3) Quality hours spent in clinic
4) Different procedures you are able to perform

As far as UoP, they have a very large patient pool that is only getting bigger with the moving of the clinic to a more accessible area. There is a two month waiting period for new patients. You get more clinic hours than 90 percent of schools. You get to treat the patients without sending them to endo or some other department. If you look at the body of work that students get to do at UoP, it is very high in relation to other schools. I know of many schools where you get to do like 1 or 2 molar endo, whereas at UoP people do many early and often. People aren't going to like UoP because they only interview around 50 people out of state from the many out of state applicants, but at least stop slandering the school if you don't know anything about it. There are many good clinical schools, but rating them would be impossible because even people at the same school have a different clinical experience. Silencio is right when saying that no school will fully prepare you from a clinical standpoint, good point.

👍
Couldn't agree more - my sister went to UoP Dental and from the requirements she had to fulfill and the wide array of patients she saw, I would say just cause its 3 years doesn't mean you won't get enough preparation. They just speed things up - start clinic right away, have shorter summers, but you see just as many patients you just start this in your second year. Also - in the dental community (my entire family are in dentistry) UoP is highly regarded as cranking out students who are well -prepared clinically. Though well-prepared is definitely all relative to each student - you'll feel the most prepared once you get your first job, are working all the time and get real hands on experience.

 

[UCSD6]

There are schools without any significant summer vacations and full-time schedules for most of the 4 years, there's a reason why there is only one three year dental school. What the reason is, I do not know. I got love for UOP just can't see how an accelerated program is better than a conventional. Not really into accelerating my education. Just my thought.

 

[hifive]

There are schools without any significant summer vacations and full-time schedules for most of the 4 years, there's a reason why there is only one three year dental school. What the reason is, I do not know. I got love for UOP just can't see how an accelerated program is better than a conventional. Not really into accelerating my education. Just my thought.

You got a valid point a lot of schools dont really have any real summers off from school, I dont really see how a 3 year program offers more clinical time than a 4 year, maybe a UoP student can offer some insight.

I am sure that the 3yr pressure is also on the faculty/administration, if UoP did switch to a 4yr program it would just confirm its prowess as one of leaders in dental education, but I guess that would mean cutbacks with the cash and probably less popularity then that which is seen with a 3yr program.

 

[TeethRgreat]

Okay, Seeing how there has been some confusion about UoP on this thread, I'll clear it up.

UoP, just like other schools, has its last two years mainly spent in the clinic. Where the school differs is the first year, which combines the first 2 years of most other schools into one. It combines preclinical courses such as operative and fixed prosth with didactic courses (human anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, dental anatomy, oral biology, human growth, dental anatomy, endo, hands on clinic courses (all day every monday during year 1), and the list goes on). Basically, the schedule goes something like this with a little variation... Monday (clinical courses all day), Tuesday (didactics all day), Wednesday (fixed prosth all day), Thursday (operative all day), Friday (didactics all day). School goes 8-5 most days.

Just to give you an idea of what we have covered lab wise in just over 2 quarters of school; we have prepared multiple PFMs, FVCs, Emaxx, buildup, Class I,II,III,IV,V,VI preparations with GI, Amalgam, and composite, waxed nearly every tooth individually in both arches besides 3rd molars, had multiple waxing projects to occlusion and aesthetics.

In terms of clinic, we have a little experience with curettes and scalers w/ scaling and root planing, a decent amount of experience with perio probing, chart documentation, etc.

Didactically, we have covered a lot, and the quality of instruction and material is good. I don't really know how else to explain it...I have not heard of anyone NOT passing boards here on their first try.

These are just some of the things that we have done...My point is that the school being a 3 year school does not make it weaker at all. Most people know this already, but I saw one individual on this thread that didn't so I decided it would be good to inform them. Students at UoP do everything, and anyone who has done any research on the school or visited it would know that. But during year 1....we have no life. Let me know if any of you have any questions.

 

[UCSD6]

No need to get so touchy on the subject, I never said it was an inferior program, just wondering how the 3 years is equal to 4 years, I have heard uop students say they cut out the bs, well what is the bs? Going back to my last statement, if a 3 year school is capable of producing graduate dentists at the standard or care, which it has for years ( i personally know uop grads) why isn't a DDS a 3 year degree. Instead I have heard of a possible 5th year gpr required in california.

 

[TeethRgreat]

No need to get so touchy on the subject, I never said it was an inferior program, just wondering how the 3 years is equal to 4 years, I have heard uop students say they cut out the bs, well what is the bs? Going back to my last statement, if a 3 year school is capable of producing graduate dentists at the standard or care, which it has for years ( i personally know uop grads) why isn't a DDS a 3 year degree. Instead I have heard of a possible 5th year gpr required in california.

I wasn't getting "touchy" on a subject, the question was asked and I answered it. 5th year GPR is not required in california. The program is difficult and densely packed with courses during year 1. The pace of the courses are quick; sometimes too quick which is why people should take some of the big courses beforehand. The net number of days off is also significantly reduced over most other 4 years, mainly after year 1 where some schools have a 2-3 month summer break, UoP has 3 week summer breaks. That's how they fit 4 years into 3. It sounds scary, but it's definitely doable and you can really take a lot from it. I don't know about the school "cutting out the bs" because I have not attended another school and don't know how their curriculum differs.

 

[peerless218]

How the hell does UOP make this list? only a 3 yr school, can't see it preparing students better than 4yr schools

Just a personal opinion,

UOP compressed the basic science classes from 2 years down to 1. You still get the FULL 2 years worth of clinical time in your 2nd and 3rd year as well as a very heavy loaded pre-clinical operative and fixed classes in 1st year. Do I feel competent? yes I feel competent prepping teeth and deliver crowns. Do I feel like I know the human body anatomy, physio, and biochem. I would say no, but I still managed to squeeze in a high 80s on the boards. Pacific is not for everyone in terms of the heavy cramming style and the intense fast pace learning style in the 1st year curriculum. After 1st year, things really slow down starting 2nd year. That's just me though, there are students who learn their basic sciences really well with the same amount of time we're given. Honestly, 1st year is not exactly something I want to experience ever again. How many schools give out over 10-13 exams, 10 quizzes, 10 practicals, 6-7 wax up projects in a 10 week qt plus 11 finals(with cumulative finals over 3 qts) in 5 days?? Def not many, if any.

Since there is only ortho here at Pacific Dugoni for post-grad training, the DDS students practically get to perform or assist most dental procedures you can think of. The only thing the school doesn't do here are the major complicated OS cases. So I think it's fair to say that we, Pacific Dugoni students, are not receiving anything less in terms of clinical training.