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Purpose: The Commission of Dental Accreditation (CODA) does not set minimum standards for clock hours of training in Dental and Clinical sciences. The purpose of this evaluation was to compare United States (US) dental schools for variability in clock hours. The current paper utilizes the American Dental Association's survey of clock hours of all US dental schools which is publicly available data. Clock hours survey from 2010 to 2011 was utilized and the analysis tool, JMP, was utilized to visualize and report variability., Perspective: The current paper highlights the large variation in clock hours of training among core clinical subjects in accredited dental schools around the United States. For example, teaching Physical Evaluations; Oral and Maxillofacial; and Oral Diagnosis and Treatment Planning were 97.0; 126.6; and 74.4 h. Moreover, upper limit for hours of Operative Dentistry teaching was 1410 h and lower limit was 129 h. Various other fields of education do enforce strict requirements on educational clock hours. For instance, Massachusetts' General Law states that both private and public schools must have 900 and 990 h in a school year for elementary and secondary schools, respectively. However, no such stipulation exists in the field of Dental Education. CODA's mission is "to serve the oral health care needs of the public" and CODA must consider if the average dental patient would consider a dentist who attended the school delivering 1410 h of Operative Dentistry to be the same standard as a graduate of the school delivering 129 h., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

The aim of this article is to describe the development and implementation of a case completion curriculum as a new clinical education model for the predoctoral program at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. In this innovative model, students conduct patient-based comprehensive care and complete assigned patient cases on which their performance is assessed, in contrast with a traditional model based on procedural numerical requirements. In our new model, senior tutors, who are full-time faculty members, act as group leaders responsible for patient assignment, treatment planning, monitoring of student performance, and verification of patient care. The number of completed patient cases in this new comprehensive care system increased from a previous average of 12.8 cases per student prior to graduation to 22.8 cases. Additionally, the number of patients who had to be transferred due to outstanding or pending treatment when their student provider graduated or because of students' need to fulfill discipline requirements has decreased from an average of 16.4 to 4.6.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a new clinical curriculum on dental student productivity as measured by number of procedures performed in the student teaching practice. Harvard School of Dental Medicine adopted a new clinical education model for the predoctoral program in summer 2009 based upon a Case Completion Curriculum (CCC) rather than a discipline-based numeric threshold system. The two study groups (threshold group and case completion group) consisted of students who graduated in 2009 and 2010. Clinical performance was assessed by clinical productivity across five major discipline areas: periodontics, operative dentistry, removable prosthodontics, fixed prosthodontics, and endodontics. The relationships between the two study groups with regard to number of procedures performed by category revealed that the case completion group performed a significantly higher number of operative and removable prosthodontic procedures, but fewer periodontal and endodontic procedures (p⩽0.03). No statistically significant difference in number of procedures was observed with fixed prosthodontic procedures between the two groups. Clinical productivity as a result of redesigning the clinical component of the curriculum varied in selected disciplines. The CCC, in which the comprehensive management of the patient was the priority, contributed to achieving a patient-based comprehensive care practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]