The UCSF School of Dentistry Class of 2021 must adapt to change in order to compete in today’s evolving oral health care industry. Earning a dental degree is only the beginning. To be successful, dentists must embrace lifelong learning. Below are the top five trends that are likely to impact the future of dentistry.
1. Aging Patients
Our graduates likely will have more patients who are 65 and older, with high care needs and complex histories. Thanks to decades of better preventive care, these people are keeping more of their teeth than their predecessors. This increase in the aging population and its uneven geographic distribution is likely to pose oral health challenges. Our graduates will need to focus less on acute, hospital-based interventions and more on primary care interventions, such as compliance with medications, prevention services, and lifestyle changes. They will need to rely on their skills in psycho-social and behavioral interventions to encourage desired patient behaviors.
2. Working in a Health Care Team
As oral health care increasingly is delivered in group practices and localized health hubs, our graduates must be able to function as part of interprofessional teams working alongside nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and other health and social care providers. They will need to analyze risk factors and screen for medical conditions. In this type of health care system, they will need to know how and when to refer, and to develop strong relationships with health navigators like dental insurers.
3. Dental Consumerism
In today’s world of consumerism, patients are astute “shoppers” seeking value. With a simple tap on the keyboard, they can find the average cost of dental services in their area. Traditional care is being swapped for at-home teeth whitening, mail-order orthodontics and other direct-to-consumer services. Patients are willing to pay for procedures that will improve their health or aesthetics. Our graduates will need to accept and respond to health care consumerism. Concierge dentistry will likely gain in popularity as more patients seek flexible health assessments, tailored to their needs and health optimization. Today, concierge health care subscription models and virtual concierge dentistry are still ill-defined for traditional models of dentistry, but our graduates should not discount them.
4. Personalized Data-Driven Dentistry
To serve younger patients, our graduates must go where they are — online. The rise in health data is entering a new stage of digitization. Smart algorithms can be integrated within the health care system to analyze data, offer diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations, and determine the best treatment outcomes for individual patients. Advancements in genomic data and science will further deepen our understanding of precision dentistry and health care. To have a deeper influence on patients’ day-to-day health and wellness, our graduates must be able to integrate the digital health care landscape of wearable technology, embedded applications, and real-time monitoring sensors into their patients’ care plans. Our graduates will need to develop business plans and cultures that embrace telehealth technologies, including integration interfaces, patient engagement systems, and on-demand virtual dentist applications with HIPAA-compliant video streaming.
5. Sustainable Practice
Dentistry has a significant environmental impact due to its high utilization of energy and resources. Our graduates have a professional obligation and social responsibility to transform the practice of dentistry from an environmentally perilous model to a sustainable one. More dental offices are practicing green dentistry, or eco-dentistry, with sustainable resources. More patients are likely to seek dentists who share their environmental values. This expectation, in addition to our increasing need for single-use items for the COVID-19 pandemic, will present challenges for our graduates. Dentists will need to develop green policies with sustainable clinical approaches, while still upholding high standards in asepsis and patient care.
Good luck, Class of 2021, in re-shaping dentistry as we know it.
— Sara Hughes, MA, EdD, associate dean of education and student affairs, UCSF School of Dentistry