26 Roseman College of Dental Medicine Graduates Match with Residency Programs

April 3, 2019
College of Dental Medicine Roseman University Spectrum

You’ve completed dental school, now what do you do?

As a graduating dental student, there are a variety of paths that can be taken once the Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) or Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree is complete. You can either enter the workforce as a general dentist or match with a residency program.

Residency Programs

There are a range of options when it comes to residency programs. You can either complete an Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) program, a General Practice Residency (GPR) or you can choose to specialize. According to the American Dental Association (ADA) there are ten dental specialties that are approved and adopted by the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards and all have residency programs associated with them. Those include:

  • Dental Anesthesiology
  • Dental Public Health
  • Endodontics
  • Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology
  • Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology
  • Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
  • Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics
  • Pediatric Dentistry
  • Periodontics
  • Prosthodontics

Roseman is fortunate to have 26 Class of 2019 graduates entering one of the above listed residency programs. Schools at which they are completing residencies include Roseman University, UCLA, University of Washington, University of Iowa, Ohio State University, and Northwestern University, to name a few.

Of the 26 graduates, four will be doing a residency program via the military. Burke Devlin and Allison Bertoni are highlighted below.

Burke Devlin

Devlin will be doing an Army one-year AEGD residency program. Once the residency program is complete he will serve his country as an Army dentist for at least another four years and give soldiers excellent dental care. At some point, once his service is complete with the Army, he would like to buy his own practice. Devlin does not have any prior military service; however his dad was Army 82nd Airborne before Devlin was born and used to tell him stories when he was growing up of his military experience. Devlin’s maternal grandfather was also in the Army during WWII, his older brother was a Marine and he has a few cousins who have been in Navy, Air Force, and Army.

Allison Bertoni

Bertoni, with no prior military experience, will be doing a one-year AEGD residency program with the Army. Once the residency program is complete, she is unsure how long she’ll stay in the Army once her obligation is complete. Typically, those that take the military route during dental school “make a commitment to the Armed Forces [which] begins with serving as an active-duty member with a year-for-year repayment, with a minimum obligation of three years,” according to the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). Bertoni says that she may like the Army enough to stay long-term, but otherwise she’d like to open up her own practice or work in a group practice. Bertoni really enjoys the esthetic side of dentistry so ideally she wants to work in a practice where she gets to do a lot of aesthetic cases. She chose the Armed Forces because she wants to serve her country and see other parts of the country and world. In addition, Bertoni said that having dental school paid for was a perk.

At any given time, Roseman has roughly 20 dental students that range from first-year to fourth-year students that are on military scholarship. Usually these 20 students receive their commission into the Armed Forces the first year of dental school.

You decide not to do a dental residency program, what are your choices?  

Although we have 26 dental students entering residency programs, Roseman still has 56 students that are taking a different route. Some will enter private practice; however, others may choose a different career path. According to the American Student Dental Association (ASDA), those alternative career paths include, but are not limited to:

  • State & County Public Health Programs which hire dentists to provide dental services in one or more multi-county districts.
  • Hospital Dentistry which typically involves treating patients who don’t receive their dental care through traditional channels, such as those who are medically or mentally compromised (e.g., patients with cancer, AIDS, heart disease and Alzheimer’s), patients with emergency needs and hospital employees.
  • Dental Service Organizations (DSO) which contract with dental practices to provide administrative and operations management. In this model, a new dentist works as an employee and earns a salary, focusing exclusively on patient care. The DSO provides all nonclinical and administrative functions, such as accounting, marketing and billing.
  • US Public Health Service which employs dentists in the public health field through numerous federal health care agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, Health Resources and Services Administration, National Institutes for Health and the Indian Health Service.

The pathway that Roseman dental graduates take is based on the desires of each graduate and what type of oral health impact they wish to make in the communities they choose to serve. No matter the pathway, oral health is being impacted in a positive way.

Author
Rachael Thomas, MBA
Marketing Director
Roseman University of Health Sciences