Small business needs assessment: a comparison of dental educators' responses with SBDC survey results.

A primary focus of dental education is to teach students the knowledge, skills, and values essential for practicing dentistry. However, the preparation of dentists to manage a business is frequently cited as inadequate. A survey was prepared to assess teachers' opinions of business instructional topics: challenges; desired training; employee benefits; learning resources; importance of business topics; and appropriateness of time allocations. The purpose of this project is to compare opinions of teachers of dental practice management with key management aspects reported for service businesses by the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Practice management teachers from forty-eight (89 percent) schools responded to the survey. They indicated that several challenges confronting dentists are similar to other service businesses. Dentists, however, rank customer relations appreciably higher. In order of importance of teaching topics, the practice management teachers rank ethics and personnel management as a high priority and planning as a low priority. Awareness of the similarities and differences in the perceptions of practice management teachers and businesspeople may result in instructional improvements.

Student productivity in a comprehensive care program without numeric requirements.

As the dental students of the Class of 2000 entered the Comprehensive Care Clinic at the University of Colorado School of Dentistry in the spring of their second year (spring of 1998), a different, competency-based set of clinical expectations was communicated to them. These students were presented a list of "Recommended Core Experiences" and told that the "requirements" for completion of the Comprehensive Care Program were 1) successful performance on all departmental competency examinations, and 2) timely completion of the comprehensive dental treatment appropriate to each assigned patient. This study examined the number of procedures completed during the six semesters in the Comprehensive Care Clinic for the Class of 2000, as compared to the clinical activity for the Class of 1999 during the same stage of their career. The overall mean number of clinical procedures performed per student was 7 percent greater for the students in the Class of 2000 than for those in the Class of 1999. These results suggest that numerical requirements are not necessary to ensure dental student productivity and that, in fact, students can complete more clinical procedures in a comprehensive care clinical environment without numerical requirements.