Comprehensive Care Clinical Competencies

Catalog description

Dental education is competency-based, meaning, dental students must develop competency in the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are meaningful and necessary for the contemporary practice of general dentistry, and dental students must demonstrate competency in their didactic, pre-clinical and clinical performance in courses, simulation, and clinical patient care. The Department of Comprehensive Care and School of Dental Medicine have 12 patient-based clinical competencies that all D3 and D4 student doctors must complete and pass on their own and without assistance, as the Comprehensive Care clinical competencies are graduation requirements. Once students reach a specific number of clinical experiences in several comprehensive care procedures they then undertake high stakes assessment of competency in specific procedures when the student is considered ready by their faculty supervisors and have completed a minimum number of experiences. Successful completion and passing of clinical qualifying exams are also required prior to challenging some competencies. The amount of clinical experiences and rubrics for the competency exams have been determined by the Department of Comprehensive Care and department calibration efforts, and are incorporated into the Axium electronic health record daily grading system.