Journal of dental education
-
Both the anatomy and physiology parts of national boards have questions on neuroscience. Currently, there are course guidelines established for dental neuroanatomy but not for dental neuroscience. As a result, there is great variability in what and how neurosciences are taught to dental students. ⋯ Since the Institute of Medicine study recommended that basic and clinical sciences curricula provide clinically relevant education, a neuroscience curriculum can integrate basic understanding of how the nervous system works in the care and management of dental pain. This paper describes the integrated approach to teaching neuroanatomy as a component of the head and neck gross anatomy course at the University of Louisville. This integrated strategy provides dental students with the basic concepts of neuroscience, pain pathways, autonomic nervous system, and detailed information on the cranial nerves.
-
The anatomical sciences form one of the major building blocks of the basic medical sciences in the professional training of dentists. This paper defines the courses and classifies the formats of teaching for each course within the anatomical sciences curriculum. Information was gathered from the Internet, specifically the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) website links to U. ⋯ The results demonstrate the distribution of schools in the United States and Canada teaching anatomical sciences in the following categories: stand-alone, sequential, and multifaceted courses for gross anatomy; stand-alone and integrated courses for histology; stand-alone, integrated, incorporated, and no course for neuroanatomy; and stand-alone, incorporated, and no course in embryology. This paper concludes with the proposition that a survey of the usage of anatomical knowledge in use in a typical dental general practice needs to be conducted. The results of such a survey need to be evaluated with the intention of determining what should be taught in a dental clinical anatomical sciences curriculum.
-
The predominant difference between the histology offered to dental students and that taken by other health care professionals is the emphasis placed on the oral tissues. The oral histology component of the dental curriculum is commonly handled in one of three ways, all delivering far more detailed information than the often less than one hour that a typical medical histology course spends on the oral cavity and its component tissues. Overall, three general curricular styles can be defined: 1) dental histology is taught by medical or dental faculty as a separate course, the oral histology component being a separate course taught by either faculty group; 2) medical and dental students take histology together in a single class with the oral histology component taught separately by faculty from either college; and 3) both basic and oral histology is taught within a single semester, the format used at the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry. ⋯ The main portion of this paper will describe a self-study, non-microscope-based laboratory experience designed to complement this fused topic course. Self-study labs using digital media are becoming more popular across both medical and dental histology curricula, specifically with the oral histology component where the histological skills for preparing these tissues are rapidly disappearing from many schools. This paper describes a typical syllabus for a fused course, outlining the topics for basic and oral histology, and demonstrates how the laboratory portion has been enhanced using digital technology.