Clinical Training
Hospital Dentistry
Graduating dental students generally have minimal experience with the hospital environment and medically compromised patients. Much of the program is dedicated to these critical issues. Physical diagnosis, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, and a lecture series that covers didactic topics of importance are provided. Residents quickly become familiar with clinic emergency protocol, management of dental emergencies, program philosophy, hospital practices and organizational structure.
Clinical Dentistry
Residents spend a least 60% of the residency delivering comprehensive dental care to the outpatient population. Residents deliver comprehensive care to those patients in their clinic practice. Patients are treatment planned in a conference forum to achieve the maximal educational benefit from each clinical experience. The outpatient clinic is in operation 5 days per week and is staffed by full and part time attendings.
Forensic Dentistry
The only postgraduate curriculum of its kind in the country, the Graduate School of Medicine’s Division of General Dentistry offers intensive case-based exposure and training for residents in the field of forensic dentistry. Forensic dentistry is a vital component of the professional forensic science community applying dental science to the identification of unknown, disfigured, decomposing or skeletal remains, besides playing a pivotal role in the identification of mass disaster victims.
Residents will visit crime scenes and participate in oral autopsy procedures to gain competence in the method and technique of the postmortem dental examination and positive identification process. Faculty member, Murray K. Marks, PhD, D-ABFA, a dental anthropologist and board certified forensic anthropologist, also has a joint appointment in the Department of Pathology and consults with East Tennessee Medical Examiners through the Regional Forensic Center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and with national (FBI), state (TBI), and local law enforcement officials.
