Evaluating Dental School Faculty Staffing and Clinical Supervision

Participants:

Faculty/Clinicians/Staff: Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, Vidya Ramaswamy, Romesh Nalliah, Amy Cohn

Students: Kieran Baack, Palaniappan Chellappan, Tristan Clark, Jordan Goodman, Lauren Hirth, Jakob Kiel-Locey, Andrea McAuliffe, Riley McKeown, Donald Richardson, Adam VanDeusen, Zhipeng Xu

Project Contact: [email protected]

Project Synopsis:

In this project, the team focused on evaluating operations at a dental clinic to understand how changing policies on faculty staffing and student supervision might provide greater efficiency while taking into account the effects on students and workflow. The team conducted observations and interviews and, using the data obtained, built a simulation of one of the clinics where third and fourth-year dental students see patients under faculty supervision. The simulation allowed the team to explore several factors that impact student and patient wait times. Factors included whether dental students were able to request a specific faculty member and whether that faculty member had to be in their discipline or could be any qualified faculty member. The team also worked to make sure the simulation tool was flexible and could be used in a variety of situations including changes that might be needed with upcoming renovations of the Dental School. This was the first CHEPS collaboration with the School of Dentistry and opened up many exciting possibilities for the intersection of dentistry and engineering.   

For more information, see “Finding Solutions Together: Dentistry and CHEPS” in the November issue of CHEPS Pulse.

Papers, Posters, & Presentations:

Posters:

Presentations:

  • “It’s A Complex System!: How Collaboration with Engineers can help Dental Schools solve Faculty Staffing Challenges.” American Dental Education Association Annual Meeting, Toronto CDN, October 2018.