I have been in the formal teaching environment for about 20 years and left as a professor and department chairman. During my tenure I saw more than one dental student graduate whom I believe should have spent additional time in dental school.
I can think of a classic case where my departmental faculty and I did not approve of the student’s graduating but were overruled. Fortunately, the student went to a state where he had to take additional training. It took him three years to pass the state board examination with several repetitions of the additional training programs.
I think most of us would agree that there is a problem with using live patients for state board examinations as they are currently administered. Is there a solution? I believe so. It is relatively simple and should satisfy not only the needs of the state boards of dental examiners and the dental schools but also the graduating dental students.
Fundamentally, it makes no sense and is not logical that a dental student can graduate from an accredited dental school and not be fully qualified to practice dentistry upon receipt of his or her dental school diploma.
There is something wrong with this thinking, in my opinion. It is somewhat similar to supervising a dental student while the student is in school the day before he or she graduates, and the next day the newly graduated dentist requires no supervision.
My teaching philosophy was to begin to allow the students to work with less and less supervision as they proceeded in their education until I could trust them to complete a procedure without it. This I did, and students would often come to me and want me to see how well they did. Students gained a lot of confidence this way and became very good, responsible dentists.
Here is what I believe to be a workable solution and one that should be considered by a joint meeting of the dental schools and state boards of dental examiners. Since most states have dental schools, it should not be a problem to set up a scenario whereby the newly graduated dentist, upon receipt of the dental diploma, would at the same time receive a dental license to practice in the same state where the person attended dental school. Imagine having a valid license the moment you have a degree in hand.
Here are the details of such a plan:
- – Every dental student enrolled would be required to apply to the state board of dental examiners in the state where the student is attending the dental program.
- – The application would have to meet the requirements of the dental board and be done, for example, by the end of the second year.
- – The dental school would need to set up a curriculum such that all practical examinations would be given on a periodic basis as commonly agreed to in consultation with the state board of dental examiners.
- – At such time as the examinations are given, there would be a joint evaluation of the students by both the faculty and state board examiners. By common agreement of the examiners, the student would either successfully pass the examination or not. Therefore, at the time of the last practical examination in the fourth year, if the student passed all exams to the satisfaction of both parties, the student would automatically be eligible to receive a license to practice in that state upon receipt of his or her diploma and upon payment of the required licensing fees.
This would certainly solve a lot of problems that are common to our present system. It would also help develop a closer relationship between the dental schools and the state board of dental examiners.
This can also lead naturally to some cooperative relationships between more than one state whereby other state dental boards could be represented at more than one given dental school. Just as we have the regional testing boards, why not do [the testing] in the school before the student graduates? If the potential dentist has not satisfied both parties while in school, then further education and training is in order. This would be good for dentistry and for our image.
Obviously, there are some details to work out in such a plan, but the student would have a license to practice in at least one state. If the student wants to practice in another state, I now see the reciprocity scenario to be quite a different situation. However, having multiple state dental examiners visit certain schools by prior agreement is a better solution.
In addition, it would certainly solve the age-old problem with dental specialties, and a similar plan could be used even for the specialties.
