The Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) program is designed to provide advanced training beyond the level of predoctoral dental school education, using cutting-edge technology and advances in evidence-based dentistry. The teaching philosophy in this program is based on the concept that oral health is an integral and interactive part of total health. The program is designed to expand the scope and depth of the graduates’ knowledge and skills to enable them to provide comprehensive oral health care at an advanced level.

Goals

The goals of the one-year program are to prepare the graduate to:

• Act as a primary care provider for individuals and groups of patients. This includes: providing emergency and multidisciplinary comprehensive oral health care; providing patient-focused care that is coordinated by the general practitioner; directing health promotion and disease prevention activities, and using advanced dental treatment modalities.
• Plan and provide multidisciplinary oral health care for a wide variety of patients including patients with special needs.
• Manage the delivery of oral health care by applying concepts of patient and practice management and quality improvement that are responsive to a dynamic health care environment.
• Function effectively and efficiently in multiple health care environments within interdisciplinary health care teams.
• Apply scientific principles to learning and oral health care. This includes using critical thinking, evidence or outcomes-based clinical decision-making and technology-based information retrieval systems.
• Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
• Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.

The two year AEGD program incorporates all the goals and objectives of the one-year program and is designed to expand the educational opportunities offered by:

• Offering residents experience in managing highly complex comprehensive dental care;
• Improving clinic management skills;
• Enabling residents to pursue areas of individual concentration, e.g.: temporomandibular disorders, public health dentistry, special patient care, etc.;
• Providing residents with an interdisciplinary graduate foundation in the biological and clinical sciences for careers in dental research and/or education and the practice of dentistry;
• Allowing residents to gain teaching experience, perform original research and earn an optional master of science degree if indicated.