The April JADA article by Drs. Donald Giddon and Leon Assael, "Should Dentists Become ‘Oral Physicians’?", brings to mind the barriers, be they real or imagined, that exist between the dental and medical professions in the United States.
Dentistry’s separation from medicine has resulted from a combination of professional, educational, governmental, industrial and societal forces that, over time, have failed to fully recognize the obvious relationships between the structures and function of the oral cavity and the organ systems of the human body. The oral physician concept has applicability, especially in the way such a practitioner could move unimpeded between a private practice of dentistry, an outpatient surgical setting and a major medical center. Access to, and continuity of, health care would improve, and patients would most likely experience better outcomes.
My view of an oral physician is a dentist who has completed training in a program that combines general practice residency-like clinical dentistry experiences with rotations in medical disciplines, such as otolaryngology, internal medicine, family practice, dermatology, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, infectious disease, pediatrics, neurology, endocrinology, psychiatry, cardiology, hematology/ oncology, radiation oncology and pathology. Such instruction would afford a dentist a broad-based and in-depth postgraduate experience that would befit the oral physician identity.
This program, essentially an expanded oral medicine residency, would be a method by which a motivated dentist could obtain excellent medical training without enrolling in a traditional four-year medical school curriculum. A graduate of such a program could be referred to as an "oral physician," much like graduates of other specialty programs earn designations that denote their particular expertise.
Oral physicians should be eligible for a corresponding board certification that would allow them to join the dental and medical staffs of hospitals and earn admitting privileges. These highly trained professionals could serve as ambassadors for improved communication between the spheres of dentistry and medicine, and as tremendous resources for patients and all health care personnel.
