because we're a general practice residency we are based in a hospital but unlike a lot of other hospital programs where all you do is extract teeth and place simple fillings our residency program is situated in an office that sees a variety of patients and we're able to perform quite a number of complex services over the course of the year that the residents are here
when i was a fourth year in dental school i decided to pursue a general practice residency because i felt like i learned the basics of dentistry and dental school but i really wanted to expand my skill set and here we're able to learn iv sedation we learn how to place implants and take out third molars we get a lot of surgical experience i'm from columbia so that was a big kicker for me and my family to come back to columbia but while applying to different programs i had the opportunity to volunteer at a clinic here in town one of the free clinics that we do rotate through and got to see and hear firsthand experience of previous residents and getting to hear their opportunities that they had and their experiences kind of drove me to pursue this program residents that come to this program will learn how to treat the whole patient we throw our residents into the same mix of patients that the faculty see you're going to have an opportunity when you're with us to experience patients that have a variety of medical conditions that you will see in your practice later on our patients come from absolutely all backgrounds and so in the morning our residents are providing maybe high level treatment on one of the hospitals physicians or top administrators and then we're also helping really our most needy patients our most vulnerable populations whether that's extractions or urgent dental needs
so residents treat patients in the emergency department that sometimes just have an acute dental abscess others may have been involved in a car accident we see children that have been in bicycle accidents we see patients that have been on the lake and have boating accidents so we see a lot of trauma patients and we see a lot of patients that just have difficult needs
it's a typical day as a resident we all meet here before eight we'll have a morning huddle with the whole team just so everyone's on the same page i mean we will treat patients from eight to four thirty ish five there's also one resident on call at all times for the hospital so your pager may go off during the day and you may have to run over and do some consults in the hospital um and particularly you may have to treat someone in an or setting so you're anywhere from general dentistry to being a surgeon in the hospital
we rotate at the free clinic the health department in richland and we get to treat patients with no insurance who are underserved we also rotate at a pediatric clinic so we get to work with kids in working at the hospital you do see how many patients actually do show up to the hospital with dental needs and i know the hospital has told us multiple times that they're very thankful that we're here to help keep some people who may go to the hospital for primary care dental care don't actually need to be there to where we can treat them
you'll also learn how to work as a member of a health care team learn how to communicate with physicians nurses other health care providers we also do rotations in anesthesia emergency medicine and family medicine so it's kind of like an ever-changing schedule you're not just doing the same thing regardless of whether they're internal medicine infectious disease orthopedics cardiovascular surgery
when they call on us to help us with one of their patients they know and can trust that we'll be able to step forward and provide the care that those patients need and so again we're treated as colleagues and not as underlings in an environment like this and again i'm very proud of that our program has been set apart by really the commitment of the faculty to guaranteeing their residents get just awesome experiences and awesome outcomes for the patients
we have a great team we work well together we communicate well you always know where you stand with us
there's certain programs around the country that only have one attending one thing that drove me to come here was the fact that there are basically three attendings here at all times so there's always someone you can go to to ask questions because as a new resident
you have tons of things running through your mind you're always going to have questions and that's what made me feel comfortable and help me build autonomy would be the fact that they're always here they're not always going to bail you out but they will have some type of insight on which way to go and they're always willing to help
i think we try to promote a healthy environment for our residents and that's going to be inside of working outside of work personally i have a wonderful wife and two twin kids and so trying to set the example of work really hard while you're at work and then walk out the back door knowing that you've provided all the wonderful patient care you can for the day and then go experience your family i want to have residents develop hobbies develop interests inside and outside of dentistry
i really enjoyed living in columbia it's very centrally located throughout the state so it's easy to you know travel to the upstate or to the beach it's kind of not too far from anything i really enjoyed living here for the past year
i think i'm excited for our residents that they get so many good opportunities and really that they get to learn what they're good at and what motivates them after we've tuned them into different areas of dentistry
i think it really morphs and changes a resident's expectations to what their career path's going to look like by exposing them to you know hospital dentistry or the operating room or some advanced sedation procedures
they end up changing really what their career goals look like and so i think it's exciting to be a part of that
we've been running the residency program continuously since 1984. without interruption the health system gives us great support and has done so through the years and we look forward to continuing to have the residency program grow and thrive as we move forward
