Article Review:
In order to increase the exposure of dental students to community-based education, the Pipeline Project was established. In total, there are 14 schools participating in the United States, 4 specifically in California. Many challenges face a school in order to incorporate a community-based teaching program. These schools in the Pipeline Project already had some community involvement, some more than others, but all making a commitment to move senior students to rotations in the community. In 2003, the student’s mean days (average across all schools) in rotation were 16 but by 2007, that mean increased to 39.
Of course, with an expansion of a community-based program, challenges occur. Once faculty support is established, the first major concern is whether the quality of the community instruction is at least as good as the school instruction. Second is the incorporation of community sites into the program that would accept students. Incorporating rural sites have been of particular interest in the Pipeline program. Although in general, the number of rural sites has increased, some urban schools don’t feel any necessity to service rural areas. A few schools have had logistic difficulties, such as transportation for sites that were farther away, difficulty with rotation scheduling, restructuring the curriculum, and mentoring the students sufficiently.
However, even with the difficulties of restructuring a dental program to incorporate more community-based education, there was general support of student involvement in the community, and any hesitance that may occur with student involvement quickly disappears once the students were in action. Students as well feel the benefit of the community involvement from the practical side of understanding the pace of workings of a real dental office to being able to provide improved care for culturally diverse groups of people. The Pipeline Project overall has been positive one for all concerned including the increased access it provides to provide dental care to underserved populations.
References
Atchison, E. R., et al. (2009). Community-Based Clinical Dental Education: Effects of the Pipeline Program. Journal of Dental Education, 73 (2 suppl), S269 S282.
