Comprehensive dental services for an underserved and medically compromised population provided through a community partnership and service learning.

The University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry in San Francisco established a comprehensive dental care program at Laguna Honda Hospital, a public, skilled nursing facility. The program had three goals: (1) to provide dental students and residents an opportunity to provide oral health care for adults who were frail and medically compromised who could not come into the clinics, (2) to increase students' access to patients who needed removable prosthodontics, and (3) to fulfill Pacific's commitment to public service.

Electronic health record conversion in a private dental school.

The three-year-plus transition from a partial to a full electronic set of clinics in a dental school is described. The processes of requirement determination, vendor selection, and implementation are described, as well as challenges and benefits. A number of recommendations are offered, including the wisdom of involving, early in the process, all who are affected by the conversion, recognition that different users interact with the clinic differently and therefore have different requirements and expectations, and that some individuals adapt easily to change and others find it more challenging.

Risky business: influencing people to change.

The evolution of prevention methods represents a positive development of significant value. Managing the behavioral components of prevention is crucial to create buy-in by staff and patients. Numerous recommendations for successful implementation of CAMBRA are cited.

Clinical quality assurance surveillance and targeted interventions: managing unfavorable trends in a dental school clinic.

Dental schools establish quality assurance (QA) programs that are intended to improve patient care, comply with requirements of liability carriers and regulatory agencies, and maintain accreditation. Data collection, trend analysis, and interventions are typically used in QA programs to monitor and improve compliance. The purpose of this article is to discuss unfavorable trends and examine the effect of targeted interventions in three clinical operations: infection control, removable prosthodontics, and case reviews of students' patient care in progress (interim case reviews) at a U.

Student occupational exposure incidence: perception versus reality.

Reports of clinical injuries made to a dental school Office of Occupational Health and Safety at the time of their occurrence were compared to self-reports on a survey for dental students in five classes at various times over their educational careers. The majority of injuries were from needlesticks and mishaps with hand instruments. Underreporting at the time of injury was approximately one-third in the first clinical year and one-half in the final clinical year of the three-year program.