The Mission of St. Mary’s Hospital is to provide excellent healthcare services in a spiritually enriched environment.  A part of the scope of those services is Dental Healthcare.  The General Practice Residency provides via resident education, comprehensive dental care to a community population mostly composed of the underserved and uninsured with limited access to private care.  It also furnishes a supportive role in the hospital by affording consulting services, inpatient care and trauma coverage as well as being active participants of the overall Medical-Dental staff by participating in but not limited to committee appointments, chairmanship and medical staff offices.

The overall goals and objectives of the General Practice Residency Program are to:

1. Provide experience to the resident in all aspect of General Dentistry to include and not limited to restorative, prosthodontic, dento-alveolar surgery, preventive dentistry, periodontic, endodontic, implant surgery and restoration

2. Prepare the resident via education (i.e. lectures, seminars, journal clubs, rounds and clinical case base presentations) to make informed decision utilizing evidence based dentistry.

3. Provide comprehensive patient care to our diverse population.  In addition, resident will have practical exposure to treatment and education of special needs patients.

4. Participate in community outreach services promoting dental health.

5. Provide oral health care in the hospital setting to medically compromised patients, special needs and pediatric patients in the emergency room, the hospital floor and the operating room.

The above will be measured daily with one-on-one conferences and group sessions

Rotations:

Medicine: The medicine rotation involves one month of active medical rounds and grand rounds.  The goal is for the resident to learn how to obtain and interpreting the patient’s chief complaint, medical and social history and review of systems; interpreting clinical and other diagnostic data from other health care providers.  In addition, resident will assist the medical resident in performing history and physical evaluation; collect other data in order to establish a medical assessment.

Anesthesiology:  The anesthesia rotation involves one month of practical experience.  During this time the resident will be exposed to different aspects of anesthesiology to include and not limited to pre-operative evaluation, assessment of the effects of behavioral and pharmacologic techniques, venipuncture, patient monitoring, airway management and intubation, administration of pharmacologic agents, prevention and treatment of anesthetic emergencies and assessment of patient recovery from anesthesia.  The resident will shadow an anesthesiologist and/or nurse anesthetist during the rotation.