Dental Students' Perspective on Critical Competencies from a Community-Based Program

            The Community-Based General Dentistry Externship (CGDE) is a 3-month long mandatory rotation for fourth year students at Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM).  The CGDE was designed to expand the student knowledge of oral health delivery systems in a community-based setting.  In dental school, students learn the basic clinical and patient management skills but in CGDE, they expand on other relevant competencies such as critical thinking in dental emergencies, special needs, culturally competent care and inter-professional education.  The objective of this study is to discuss the dental students' perspective on skills they have acquired during a community-based program.  The method used to evaluate these skills is through pre- and post-externship questionnaires. Comparing the pre- and post-experience evaluations demonstrates an increase in the number of students that agreed that they were more confident as a clinician especially in: efficiency, time management, handling dental emergencies, treating patients with special needs and understanding the structure and relevance of community health centers.  There was also an increase in interest to work in a community health center and participate as an oral health care provider for the underserved community which is an important access to care opportunity.
Further development of the unique skills learned in CGDE and reinforcing them in the didactic curriculum could strengthen the public health training of graduates of HSDM.  A novel way to address access to oral health care is to broaden dental student exposure to underserved communities and the CGDE provides a valuable platform to do this.