Comprehensive Care Program Roundtable Day
By Rachel Boutet
On May 13, 2022, the Faculty of Dentistry held its Comprehensive Care Program (CCP) Roundtable Day. Over 50 people attended including faculty, instructors and students.
The day was led by professor Laura Tam, associate dean of undergraduate education, who is also the director of CCP at the Faculty. In this role, Tam oversees the clinical training that DDS candidates receive in the CCP.
Currently in CCP, discipline-specific instructors, mostly part-time, supervise DDS3 and DDS4 students tasked to manage patient care after the patient intake appointment(s). Patients “belong” to an individual student and are primarily managed (scheduling and treatment) by their individual student. Students are expected to attain minimum core experiences (credits) in each clinical discipline within CCP and receive grades for each clinical discipline.
The purpose of the CCP roundtable discussion was to gather stakeholders together to consider how clinical dental education, in particular, the Comprehensive Care Program, should be delivered in the future.
“It was important to hold this day because if we are going to change our model, we need to get input from all of our stakeholders,” says Tam. “The goal is to hear from students, clinical instructors, Faculty and staff to collectively determine direction for our CCP program.”
The day was also informed by a recent report presented by the advisory group to the dean on “Re-envisioning Dental Education at The University of Toronto.” This report made several observations and recommendations related to Clinical Education and Comprehensive Care.
The overall objectives of the CCP roundtable, adopted from the advisory group report, were:
- To improve student learning
- To enhance patient experience and a higher level of quality of care, timeliness of care
- To improve efficiencies of the clinical operations
Five themes were selected for roundtable group discussion including: patient intake and treatment planning processes, issues related to minimum core experience requirements, patient scheduling, the use of general dentist instructors versus discipline-specific instructors, and the group practice model.
Jack Gerrow 7T9, adjunct professor at the Faculty, who facilitated a roundtable and made an opening presentation, said the day was filled with a lot of great discussion.
“The in-depth discussions confirmed some critical issues with the current CCP system and identified options for changes based on the published experiences of other dental programs,” he says. “The contributions made by students during the round tables were extremely valuable.”
The Faculty will take the learnings from these discussions to decide next steps for the future of CCP. The report from CCP Day can be accessed here.
Photo: Jack Gerrow presenting at CCP Roundtable Day (Jeff Comber)