1. What are the major forces that are leading to change in the dental industry and dental practice in the U.S.? How do you see these forces impacting your dental career?
DS 307 Extramural Patient Care
Reflective Paper Instructions
A major goal of DS 307 is to provide didactic and rotation experiences to enhance student’s understanding of underserved populations and community-based systems for improving oral health. To this end, DS 307 hopes to give you the opportunity to experience oral health care outside the walls of the dental school, providing insight into the lives of patients you otherwise may not have encountered and dental delivery systems that are different from the one you experience in the school. These experiences are supplemented by online content. We want you to share insights gained through these experiences by preparing a reflective paper described in our pre-rotation lecture and below. Some of you have rotated in specific extramural clinics at this point, while some of you have not. In preparing this paper, you may also consider other experiences you have had outside of the dental school, whether in an official extramural clinic, in a SCOPE activity, a mission trip, etc.
Assignment: Write a 2-page paper that addresses the following themes:
1. What are the major forces that are leading to change in the dental industry and dental practice in the U.S.? How do you see these forces impacting your dental career?
2. What are the opportunities that you see for the dental industry in general and your career in particular which may be available by serving traditionally underserved populations and partnering with community organizations?
3. Describe challenges people face getting access to dental care in traditional office, or clinic settings (i.e. financial, social, cultural, language, knowledge, medical, mental). Describe a system that may be better able to reach people who face these barriers?
4. Assume you have a contract to improve the oral health of an underserved group that does not traditionally receive dental care in dental offices or clinics (i.e. low income children in pre- schools or elementary schools, people with disabilities living in residential facilities, older adults living in nursing homes, low income children and adults who regularly visit a community center that does not have a dental clinic). You can choose to organize how you serve this population in any way you want. However, you will be paid based on your ability to demonstrate improvement in oral health outcomes for this population. What strategies, (practice design, locations, care team, interventions, partnerships) would you use to maximize your income by producing the best health outcomes at the lowest cost?
