Throughout my education, my strongest motivators have been curiosity about the biology of the human body and desire to help patients with complex medical needs improve their oral health. Experiences in dental school and a year of general practice residency helped me discover that oral medicine has the intellectual rigor, detail orientation, and integration of systemic and oral health I am seeking in a career.
I’ve long known I wanted to treat medically complex patients and work in a hospital, and I was fascinated by the oncology and pathology cases I saw while assisting in our dental school oral surgery clinic. I loved my oral medicine classes and found the physiology, immunology, and oncology of this specialty extremely relevant to my interests.
During my general practice residency, I found myself enjoying the medical side of the practice, like working with cancer patients and completing unique inpatient consults. I was especially interested in management of oral manifestations of systemic diseases, oral complications from cancer treatments, and dental needs for medically complex patients, as well as managing patients’ oral health around solid organ transplant, stem cell transplant, and head and neck radiation therapy. However, I craved a more detailed understanding of the oral biology of these conditions, which was by necessity secondary to addressing the patients’ general dentistry needs. I remembered the detail and sophistication of the oral medicine approach to such patients, and I realized that this was the kind of dentistry I wanted to practice.
The Postgraduate Program in Oral Medicine at the University of California San Francisco provides exceptional training in oral medicine. As a resident, I’ve enjoyed the excellent oral cancer experience as well as learning to treat patients with inflammatory mucosal conditions and orofacial pain disorders. I am allowed and encouraged to ask questions, and the faculty never fail to take the time to help me learn. Training at a center with such a longstanding history of clinical and research excellence in oral medicine is an immense privilege for me.
