 |
|
|
The following letter was recently sent to all DDS students. I am forwarding it to you in hopes that you will lead by positive example with respect to the School's Research Day. Faculty can serve as wonderful role models by participating in, attending and supporting Research Day. Dear Students, I've been asked to comment on the decision to make attendance at Research Day a mandatory activity. I thought it might be useful to share some of the broader issues that are currently being decided in the dental profession and that factor into these kinds of educational decisions. My hope is that many of you will become convinced of the value of the Research Day initiative as a part of your overall educational experience. Recently I was contacted by a representative of organized dentistry as were all of the nation's dental deans. The purpose was to see how dental deans felt about statements from a Federal health agency that new dental health aide therapists in Alaska are on a par with the recent graduate dentists that the organization has been hiring. The hope was that deans would support the assertion that such therapists cannot compare with those who hold doctoral degrees. This is not the first time I have received such a request. Occasionally I am contacted to endorse the view that two years of a basic science curriculum is sufficient to differentiate a dentist with a doctoral degree from expanded-function auxiliaries who have been taught isolated dental procedures and who can become quite adept at doing those procedures. Importantly, between those times when I am asked to endorse how important science is to the dental professional and how crucial it is to differentiate doctors from technicians, the pressure from the profession -- even from students -- is in just the opposite direction: In other words, there is an unfortunate movement in dentistry away from those very aspects of the dental curriculum that turn students into doctors. Many Continuing Dental Education experts make whole careers out of disparaging science in favor of a purely pragmatic and technical vocational education seeing both research and basic science as irrelevant to the practice of dentistry. If that view is correct, then maybe there really isn't much of a difference between a doctorate in dentistry and a two-year vocational program. Personally, I don't subscribe to that view, but I need your support in continuing to argue on behalf of dentistry as a true learned profession, comparable to medicine and law. My own view is that dental practitioners must be men and women of science. I define a man or woman of science in a very specific way: namely, as a sophisticated consumer of research. Only as a consumer of research can a practitioner know and evaluate objectively the various changes in practice that are inevitable over a practice lifetime. In other words, doctors can't have other people doing their thinking for them. Research Day is an important exercise for students in learning to manage information that has not be pre-digested by someone else telling them what to think. It's an exercise to help build your capacity in differentiating what is important from what is unimportant, what is relevant from what is irrelevant, what is pivotal from what is marginal. No one can do this for you, you have to do it for yourself -- otherwise you will be at the whim of corporate advertisers and salespeople who appeal to your vanity by using the term "doctor" but who have less than true respect for the education you've received. My hope too is that even those students who object to attending Research Day will be open to the experience and will make an effort to be attentive, comporting themselves as true professionals. At the very least, a professional person is one sensitive to the interests of others and, above all, embodies good manners. Turning Research Day into a sham by listening to music, working on a computer, or being otherwise engaged will be a real disappointment to me and all of the dedicated faculty and scientists who enrich your curriculum and set you apart as learned professionals. I hope this is a useful clarification. All the best,
Charles N. Bertolami, DDS, DMedSc Dean |
|
