Dental Residency Program Snapshot

Five dental residents perform comprehensive dental care in our dental clinic, using the latest dental materials and techniques. Residents have exposure to complex oral surgery cases performed in the operating room. Taking emergency calls allows dental residents to become proficient in treating any dental emergency. While here, residents have the opportunity to interact with general dentists and specialists in the community by working on cases together and through attending dental meetings and lectures.

One proud fact of our dental residency program is that approximately one half of former dental residents have stayed, and are now practicing in Vermont. The training dental residents receive from The University of Vermont and UVM Medical Center allows them to leave here confident and better prepared to treat their dental patients in private practice or to excel in a specialty training program.

Our CODA-accredited GPR is a one-year dental program at the University of Vermont Medical Center that prepares dentists for general practice by exposure to comprehensive and medically compromised patient care.

Curriculum

The Dental Residency program is one year and is fully accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation as part of the American Dental Association.

Dental Residency Goals

The goals for dental residents to achieve during the program are as follows:

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; and directing health promotion and disease prevention activities.
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 the hospital and other health care environments.
5. Function effectively within interdisciplinary health care teams.
6. 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.
7. Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability, and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
8. Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.

Journal Club and Lecture Series

The Dental Residency program curriculum includes critical literature review in meetings once a week and weekly lectures on a variety of dental and business topics by local clinicians and other professionals.  

Pathology

Residents attend quarterly pathology teaching sessions with a clinical pathologist at the UVM Medical Center.

Patient Care Conferences and Treatment Planning Sessions

Residents receive regular mentoring from our broad community of general dentists and specialists. Patient care conferences are held monthly. All residents attend along with the staff dentists and discuss continuity of care. Interdisciplinary treatment planning sessions occur quarterly and involve robust conversations with the attendings about some of the residents’ most complex patients.

Surgical / Family Medicine Grand Rounds

As part of an academic institution, Dental residents have opportunities to attend a variety of interdisciplinary grand round lectures.

Clinical Rotations

The University of Vermont Dental Residency program is one year, and it is fully accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation as part of the American Dental Association. Our affiliation with the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont provides the vital academic grounding for educating our residents, while the sponsorship of UVM Medical Center affords both institutional context and a modern workplace.

Our residents perform comprehensive dental care treating a variety of complex and medically compromised patients in several unique settings.

UVM Medical Center Dental & Oral Health Rotation

The UVMMC Dental & Oral Health clinic is the primary clinical location in a state-of-the-art facility built in 2014.  In addition to general dentistry, residents do consultations and clinic cases with specialists in oral surgery, periodontics, orthodontics and prosthodontics including restoration of dental implants. Each resident is assigned a trained dental assistant for all clinical sessions. Faculty supervision is always available. Residents complete two 10-week rotations at UVMMC DOH for a total of 20 weeks. 

Rural Private Practice Rotation

Residents spend 10 weeks seeing patients at a private practice in Middlebury, Vermont. Middlebury, home of acclaimed Middlebury College, is a quintessential Vermont small town in rural Addison County, Vermont. Residents see a great mix of general dentistry procedures and get to be part of a weekly clinic for un- and under-insured migrant farm workers. Residents receive direct supervision from the two staff dentists who are long time preceptors for multiple education programs including dental externships from multiple Northeastern dental schools. The drive to the office is about 45-60 minutes of rolling hills and farmland with views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondack mountains to the west. The Middlebury resident joins all didactics and conferences in-person with their cohort and receives mileage reimbursement. During this rotation, the resident will also be responsible for researching and presenting a chief’s conference presentation.

Rural New York Rotation

This rotation is located upstate in Warrensburg, New York at Hudson Headwaters Dental Center, which is the dental headquarters for a network of Federally Qualified Heath Centers serving the North Country of New York. Residents work with an assistant and perform all aspects of general dentistry while on this rotation. This is a public health facility but will additionally include the improved ability to provide a broad scope of general dentistry including dentures and partials. Residents receive direct supervision from the supportive staff dentists.

Warrensburg is located in the Adirondack Mountain region, about two hours away from Burlington. While rotating at Hudson Headwaters, residents live in a brand new, private resident apartment. Residents will rotate here 2 weeks at a time and then return to Burlington to rotate for 2 weeks as the hospital resident.

The total rotation is 10 weeks but is 2 weeks at a time alternating in the hospital rotation back at UVMMC. This means that the HHW resident stays connected to their co-residents and is only off-site for 2-week blocks. They join didactics and conferences virtually on Zoom and receive reimbursement for mileage.

Hospital Rotation

The 10-week hospital rotation at UVM Medical Center's main campus is comprised of participating in patient care with faculty oral surgeons both in the operating room and outpatient clinical settings. Procedures include a wide variety of oral surgical procedures and management. Cases include orthognathics, third molars, pre-cardiac clearances, special needs rehabs, and much more. Residents provide on-call services at the hospital and urgent care centers, including consultations for inpatients, and seeing patients who present in the emergency department with dental issues. Medicine rotations will also take place during this time.

During the hospital rotation, residents will also complete the following:

Anesthesia Rotation

The Anesthesia rotation allows the dental resident to perform the duties of an anesthesia resident under the supervision of the Department of Anesthesiology. This experience provides direct teaching in medicine, pharmacology and physiology. The resident gains skills in the pre-operative care, the administration of general and regional anesthesia in the operating room. Upon completion of this rotation, the dental resident is better adept to handle respiratory and cardiovascular emergencies that may develop in a dental office.

Emergency Department Rotation

During the Emergency Department rotation, residents work with an attending or resident physician and participate in emergency care. The residents gain an increased appreciation and knowledge of medicine as well as the acute evaluation of ill patients. On this rotation, residents are in the Emergency Department and spend time observing and assisting with any type of medical emergency.

Internal Medicine Rotation

During the internal medicine rotation, the residents spend a week as part of an inpatient treatment team. They will be an active part of rounding and doing overall medical evaluations for chronically ill patients in a hospital setting. They gain valuable experience in history taking, evaluation of sick patients, and the overall flow of the medical delivery system.