Involving the D1s and D2s in this vertical team allows them to “see over the horizon,” Thompson says. “So while they’re immersed in their books, they can witness what they are studying being applied to the patient in the chair, which is a beautiful thing.” Each vertical team presents its case to the other students in their clinic subgroup, and for each session, a specialist who has also performed the relevant literature search is on hand to challenge the students with his or her own questions. During summer, the focus shifts to treatment planning rounds. “Even though our students are in the clinic really early, it’s still a big transition for the D2 students when they go from being more of an assistant caregiver to a full caregiver in the D3 year. They tend to have trouble with treatment planning, because it’s very complex,” Roucka explains. “During summer rounds, the students work in vertical teams of just three students. The D3 serves as a mentor and it’s their patient case, the D2 is responsible for the treatment plan, and the D1 is more of an observer, with some assigned readings to help them learn the process of treatment planning.” As with medical rounds models, the patient is fully present for the student presentation and faculty input, and
ultimately receives the recommended treatment plan. For grand rounds, the entire student body and many of the faculty come together to hear presentations from the outstanding ICCS team or teams, as well as from a keynote speaker. The inaugural grand rounds took place this past spring, and Roucka says, “It went really well, people were happy with the format. It will be an annual event.” A foundation for lifelong learning After completing four years of dental school, all of today’s D1 students will have the full rounds experience under their belts. And although the new rounds model is more demanding in terms of student research requirements, it gets generally high marks from students, even those from this year’s graduating class who experienced rounds in its previous form. “I really enjoyed the new rounds format,” says Stacy Michels, a D4 student, who led one of the presenting teams from the spring grand rounds (topic: Squamous Cell Carcinoma Treatment Options in the Elderly Population). “It gave us, as D4s, a chance to interact with the D1s and D2s, which we don’t get to do often because they are not in clinic with us. It was formatted as sort of a mentor relationship, which I really liked, and I know when I was a D1, I would have loved to have upperclassmen friends to ask questions. Our
group really bonded and ended up getting together outside of planning our rounds. Also, the format of the presentations emphasized evidencebased dentistry more than the old rounds model, and this forced us to practice searching for and finding the most relevant articles. Overall, the new rounds model, while more challenging, was also more rewarding intellectually than the old model.” Thompson, Roucka and others are pleased that the new model seems to be fulfilling the dean’s original vision and significantly enhancing the students’ training and preparation for professional practice. “This is a model for lifelong professional learning and decision making,” says Thompson, adding that the consideration process students practice during rounds will serve them well in determining best practices for patient care, material selection and procedures as dentistry evolves. “The dentistry students are learning today is not going to be the same dentistry they are doing in 20, 30, 40 years. I would argue that in addition to clinical skills, you have to be a scientist, because your clinical skills from dental school are not going to hold you up for an entire career. The field is going through an explosion of change, and if you don’t change, you’re going to be left behind.”
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