Dental surgery trainees to get their MDs
By Diane Peters
A new combined degree program for OMFS master’s
Starting next year, students entering into U of T Dentistry’s oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) clinical training and master’s program will also obtain their MDs.
“Other programs are doing it. And there are more sick and complex patients, so surgeries are getting more complex, so you need more of a medical background,” says Karl Cuddy, assistant professor, teaching stream, who himself has an MD with an OMFS MSc.
This combined degree program (CDP) between the Faculty of Dentistry, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the School of Graduate Studies has been nearly a decade in the works, requiring efforts from across the university to make it happen.
“By offering this combined degree, we ensure our graduates are at the forefront of their field, both in Canada and internationally,” says Marcus Law, associate dean of the MD program.
Juggling surgery and medicine
Starting in July 2026, the two incoming OMFS master’s students will embark on a six-year program instead of four.
“Our students are going to be working very hard. But welcome to oral surgery,” quips associate professor Marco Caminiti 9T8 Dip OMFS, who is graduate program director of OMFS.
“People who are interested in OMFS are interested in working long, hard hours, but also seeing huge changes to people,” he adds.
Students will begin the program with a few months devoted to OMFS-focused patient care and surgery rotations, and will then hit the books and join med students for didactic classes and hospital rotations over the four years of medical school.
There are OMFS events and talks through the year that students will attend, plus their summers and during any off-service rotations such as anaesthesia are spent with Dentistry. OMFS training includes learning about procedures related to facial trauma management, pathology of the mouth, face and neck, dental extractions and wisdom tooth management, implants and others, plus how to do pre- and post-op patient care at five hospitals in Toronto.
When students have completed the MD, they’ll return to OMFS duties for two more years to satisfy the final requirements of their MSc and residency. It’s technically less time under Dentistry, but Cuddy says they’ll likely do the same number of procedures and clinical experiences.
Dentistry’s OMFS students always did off-service hospital rotations; now they’ll do most those as part of the MD instead, but some will continue under Dentistry. Some classroom material, Cuddy admits, will be review from DDS curriculum, but that will be an advantage.
“I’ve done it myself. We know that our students will be able to balance more than the other medical students because they have such a foundational knowledge. If it takes you 10 hours to learn it the first time, it’ll take you five hours the second,” he says.
Currently, it looks like students will pay their MD and MSc tuition, but they’re also funded for four years for their residency — after all, they play a critical role in assisting with patient care. “We are going to advocate for the value of funding them for six years,” says Cuddy, so the financial arrangement could change in time.
“We’re still dentists. Many of us have multiple degrees. When we’re working in the hospital, they still call us the dentist. And we’re perfectly proud of that.”
Behind the scenes
Caminiti and Cuddy spoke with then-dean Daniel Haas about developing the combined program before they were on staff — they knew of its value, plus a previous attempt at U of T Dentistry had not been successful. Caminiti began laying the groundwork in 2016 and Cuddy joined in when he was hired in 2017.
“It was one of the reasons I was willing to work here,” he says, noting that almost all the other surgical programs in Canada have converted to six-year, MD combined programs.
Cuddy, Caminiti and others in the Faculty and across the university — including Dentistry’s associate dean of graduate education Anil Kishen, graduate programs administrator Lisa Hutchinson and project manager with the office of the associate dean, MD program, Stephanie Mooney — worked together to sort the logistics of what students will learn and how their degrees will be granted.
“Bringing this program to life required extensive collaboration across the Faculty of Dentistry and the MD and Postgraduate Medical Education programs in the Faculty of Medicine,” says Law. “We also focused on student wellness, reducing redundancies in coursework and structuring the curriculum to balance academic and clinical demands.”
Future-proof surgeons
The Faculty has been haring positive feedback already from prospective students about the program’s expanded approach. “I have not heard anyone say they have any hesitation about it. Most are excited about it,” says Cuddy.
The additional medical education training will help students feel more prepared for the complex challenges of a career in OMFS, but also allows them access to more surgical fellowships, most of which require an MD. General OMFS surgeons are in high demand and short supply, but the field also needs subspecialists.
A downside for the Faculty in this change will be the loss of full-time residents as they devote much of the school year over four years to the MD program. To fill the gap, Dentistry has opened up a space for an international student to do a four-year MSc — in some parts of the world, the MD is not needed, and such a student would pay international tuition rates — plus OMFS will accept a second one-year intern. Caminiti says there’s a hope that, in time, the program could also gain a second spot for its fellowship in treating temporomandibular joint disorders and dentofacial deformities.
A worry, in the early days, was that dentists and physicians would want to preserve their professional identifies, and expect adding on an MD would confuse things. Instead, Caminiti says the idea was fully embraced, reflecting how it feels to be a dental surgeon working today.
“We’re still dentists. Many of us have multiple degrees. When we’re working in the hospital, they still call us the dentist. And we’re perfectly proud of that.”
Top photo: Dr. Caminiti (right), Dr. Cuddy (left), and Dr. Franco (centre) at the European association for craniomaxillofacial surgeons (EACMFS) 27th congress (credit: Dr. Maria Franco)