Division of Dental Services


Dental Services Home

Advanced Education in General Dentistry
AEGD Program Information
AEGD Program Application

Frequently Asked Questions
Application Process
Course Listings
Rotations
Links
Contact Us

Advanced Education in General Dentistry Residency Program

Program Director: Peter M. Jensen, DDS, MS

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO DIVISION OF DENTAL SERVICES MISSION STATEMENT

The mission of the University of New Mexico, Division of Dental Services is to provide comprehensive dental care for the underserved and medically complex patient populations of New Mexico and to serve as an educational model in clinical diagnosis, treatment, research, and resources in the care of these populations.

The clinical context in which this program operates has important implications for the program. These include:

  1. The obligation to provide patients with quality dental care. The determination, assessment, and assurance of this care is the responsibility of all—the Division of Dental Services faculty, residents, and staff.
  2. To provide the maximum benefit to the resident, patient, division, and medical center, efficiency, both temporal and financial, is highly regarded as a component in delivering high quality dental care.

The philosophical assumptions regarding the educational program and its service component are “person centered”. These are:

  1. Knowledge is relative and does not exist in a vacuum; therefore, the concept of absolute correctness is not subscribed to.
  2. The learner is an experiencing, thinking, exploring, individual.
  3. Importance is placed on the thinking process, rather than the content.
  4. The teaching-learning process relies on scientific basis of knowledge.

These philosophical assumptions rely on fundamental preconditions regarding the teaching-learning process:

  1. The teacher or authority trusts in the capacity of others to think and learn for themselves.
  2. The teacher shares with the residents the responsibility for the learning process.
  3. The teacher provides learning resources.
  4. The resident helps develop his/her program of learning.
  5. The emphasis is on fostering the process of learning.
  6. Discipline springs from the resident’s self-discipline and cannot be forced from the “outside”; however, the AEGD program offers a structure that enables and re-enforces self-discipline.
  7. Evaluation of the extent and significance of the resident’s learning is made primarily by the learner, but it is influenced by feedback from the teachers. If minimal learning is not occurring despite repeated feedback, the faculty and administration will consider other avenues of remediation.

It is understood that the educational and service objectives of the program will be in conflict at times; however, they are not mutually exclusive and share common elements.

Program Goals and Objectives

  1. 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.
  2. Plan and provide multidisciplinary oral health care for a wide variety of patients including patients with special needs.
  3. 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.
  4. Function effectively within interdisciplinary health care teams.
  5. Apply scientific principles to learning and oral health care. This includes using critical thinking, evidence or out-comes based clinical decision making and technology-based information retrieval systems.
  6. Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability, and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
  7. Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.

These goals are evaluated during the year at the quarterly evaluation sessions through multiple resident evaluation tools (both of and by the residents) and through an end of the year questionnaire administered to the residents. Additionally, periodic surveys of recent graduates will be used to supplement the data collected. These data are reviewed by the program director and faculty and if needed, appropriate actions taken for improvement of the resident experience. The following are the objectives for your residency training, followed by the Competency/Proficiency statements. The objectives are used to meet the above stated goals of the program. The proficiencies and competencies are the tools that measure the success of the resident meeting the objectives. Proficiency is a higher level of achievement than competency. Consequently, a resident can move from competency to proficiency throughout the year. The outcome that this program seeks is for each individual to become competent or even proficient in each of the goals. By achieving each competency or proficiency in the various goals, you will then achieve the objectives of the program stated above. You are expected through your clinical and didactic experiences to attain a level of skill and complexity far beyond that achieved in dental school.

Competencies ~ Advanced Education in General Dentistry Residency

The Advanced Education In General Dentistry Residency Program at the University of New Mexico provides a one year experience in general dentistry in multiple settings-out patient clinics, operating room, and the hospital setting. While the program provides an opportunity and the structure to achieve these competencies, it is the resident’s responsibility to obtain documentation showing that these skills have been attained. Full-or-part time faculty members will complete most of this documentation on standard forms. At the conclusion of the one-year residency program, each resident should have fulfilled a set of complete competencies listed below.

I. Documentation, information management and quality improvement.

  1. Evaluate scientific literature and use information in the literature in making professional decisions.
  2. Maintain a patient record system that facilitates the retrieval and analysis of the process and outcomes of patient treatment.
  3. Modify the treatment plan, if indicated, based on therapeutic outcomes, unexpected circumstances or the patient's individual needs.

II. Hard and Soft Tissue Surgery, and Hospital Protocol.

  1. Perform surgical and non-surgical extraction of erupted teeth.
  2. Perform uncomplicated pre-prosthetic surgery.
  3. Perform biopsies of oral tissues.
  4. Recognize and manage surgical emergencies and complications of intra-oral surgical treatment.
  5. Extract uncomplicated impacted wisdom teeth.
  6. Diagnose and manage common oral pathological abnormalities.
  7. Provide dental treatment in the operating room.

III. Medical risk assessment.

  1. Select and use assessment techniques to arrive at a differential, provisional and definitive diagnosis for patients with complex needs.
  2. Treat patients with a broad variety of acute and chronic systemic disorders and social difficulties, including patients with special needs.

IV. Planning and providing multidisciplinary culturally appropriate comprehensive care.

  1. Integrate multiple disciplines into an individualized, comprehensive, sequenced treatment plan using diagnostic, risk management and prognostic information for patients with complex needs.
  2. Develop and carry out dental treatment plans for special needs patients in a manner that considers and integrates those patients’ medical, psychological and social needs.
  3. Provide dental care as part of an interprofessional health care team.
  4. Diagnosis and manage oral manifestations of systemic disease.
  5. Integrate culturally appropriate modalities in the comprehensive treatment plan.

V. Obtain informed consent.

  1. Explain and discuss with patients, parents or guardians of patients, who lack decisional capacity, findings, diagnoses, treatment options, realistic treatment expectations, patient responsibilities, time requirements, sequence of treatment, estimated fees and payment responsibilities, in order to establish therapeutic alliance between the patient and/or parent or guardian, and care provider.

VI. Pediatric Dentistry.

  1. Perform pediatric pulpal therapy.
  2. Restore intra and extra-oral coronal defects in primary dentition.
  3. Perform uncomplicated surgical procedures on pediatric patients.
  4. Use pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic behavior management skills with the pediatric patient.

VII. Periodontal Therapy.

  1. Diagnose periodontal disease demonstrating periodontal examination and utilizing radiographs.
  2. Treat and manage mild and moderate periodontal disease, including non-surgical and surgical techniques.
  3. Recognize and manage periodontal emergencies and complications of periodontal treatment.
  4. Evaluate the results of periodontal treatment and establish and monitor a periodontal maintenance program.

VIII. Practice management and professional development.

  1. Function as a patient’s primary oral health care provider.
  2. Treat patients efficiently in a dental practice setting
  3. Use and implement accepted sterilization, disinfection, universal precautions and occupational hazard prevention procedures in the practice of dentistry.
  4. Practice and promote the principles of jurisprudence and ethics in the practice of dentistry and in relationships with patients, personnel and colleagues.
  5. Provide patient care by working effectively with allied dental personnel including performing sit down, fourhanded dentistry.

IX. Promoting oral and systemic health and disease prevention.

  1. Use accepted prevention strategies such as oral hygiene instruction, nutritional education, and pharmacologic intervention to help patients maintain and improve their oral and systemic health.

X. Patient assessment and diagnosis.

  1. Obtain and interpret a patient’s chief complaint, history of present illness, medical, dental, family and cultural background, social histories, and review of systems.
  2. Obtain and interpret appropriate laboratory and radiographic data and obtain additional diagnostic information through consultation with other health care providers.
  3. Perform a history and physical examination and collect other data to establish a risk assessment for use in the development of a dental treatment plan.
  4. Establish diagnosis and risk assessment incorporating historical, laboratory, radiographic and clinical findings.

XI. Pulpal Therapy.

  1. Diagnose and treat pain of pulpal origin, to include performing uncomplicated, non- surgical endodontic therapy.
  2. Recognize and manage uncomplicated endodontic situations and emergencies.
  3. Manage complex endodontic therapy and complications.

XII Replacement of teeth

  1. Treat patients with missing teeth requiring uncomplicated removable and/or fixed prostheses.
  2. Communicate care design with laboratory technicians and evaluate the resultant prostheses.
  3. Recognize and manage cases requiring complicated prostheses.
  4. Treat patients with missing teeth using uncomplicated dental implant restorations.
  5. Manage the surgical component of dental implant systems.
  6. Assess and manage complications of dental implants.

XIII. Restoration of teeth

  1. Restore single teeth using a functionally acceptable range of materials and methods.
  2. Place restorations and perform techniques to enhance facial esthetics.
  3. Restore intra and extra-oral coronal defects.
  4. Restore endodontically treated teeth.

XIV. Sedation, pain, and anxiety control.

  1. Evaluate the need for use of behavioral and/or pharmacologic modalities in management of pain and anxiety based upon psychosocial factors and anticipated clinical procedures.
  2. Use pharmacological agents in the treatment of dental patients.
  3. Provide control of pain and anxiety in the conscious patient through the use of psychological interventions, behavior management techniques, local anesthesia, and oral and nitrous oxide conscious sedation techniques.
  4. Prevent, recognize and manage complications related to the use and interactions of drugs to sedate patients and control pain and anxiety.
  5. Provide control of pain and anxiety in the conscious patient through the use of parenteral conscious sedation techniques.

XV. Treatment of medical and dental emergencies.

  1. Anticipate, diagnose and provide initial treatment and follow-up management for medical emergencies that may occur during dental treatment.
  2. Diagnose and manage dental emergencies, performing uncomplicated or reversible techniques where indicated
  3. Provide initial treatment and then manage patients with extra-oral and complex oral-facial emergencies and infections.
  4. Perform initial treatment and management of extra-oral facial trauma.
  5. Treat intraoral hard and soft tissue lesions of traumatic origin.
  6. Manage intraoral soft tissue lesions of nontraumatic origin.