Reflection on one year work anniversary
About 1 year ago, I started my job here at VCU as the school first Digital Dentistry Director. It has been a fun ride. I have had a lot of great experience learning my new work environment and my new city. I had made a lot of good friends and colleagues. I have developed great respect to the school and the students. A few things to highlight here are perhaps my CADCAM endeavor in the DDS preclinical and clinical teaching, my recent contribution to the Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) program, my contribution to the teaching in implant dentistry at the school, and finally my student mentoring.
First, the CADCAM program, over the past 12 months we had done over 100 CADCAM crowns at VCU School of Dentistry. It has be a tremendous experience. We cannot accomplish this task without the groundwork led by Dr. Steve Marinelli. Dr. Marinelli had established our CADCAM preclinical teaching which fully integrates the CADCAM learning in to all DDS classes. I got an easy job of coming in and put his plan into action. This current DDS4 class is the most well-equipped to do a CADCAM crown-one day dentistry in our DDS General Dentistry Clinic. In addition to Dr. Marinelli, we won't have done so many CADCAM crowns in our clinic without the support of Dr. Al Russell. He himself had done over half of our CADCAM activities in our clinics. To support the learning experience and patient care, we had recently hired the school first CADCAM assistant/tech-Robert Armstead. Robert has been a great addition to our team. His friendly personality and work ethics have helped facilitate our clinic scheduling, lab exercise as well as patient care. This accomplishment has not come without challenges. While I think we have done tremendous job on the curriculum integration, there are still many roadblocks/problems. We do not have enough trained faculty clinical attending. It takes time to train faculty and recruit experienced faculty. In the next 12 months, it is my goal to get faculty training in order to expand our CADCAM DDS activity in the clinic. In addition, facility transition, as the dental school getting ready for moving to the new building in 2-3 years, we are mindful of maximizing our existing facilities, at the same time looking into how the program with fit in the new facility in the future. It is currently not a simple task to do a CADCAM crown because of facility logistics. We are continue to improve the CADCAM clinical and laboratory processes.
Second, in the past 4-5 months, I have served as AEGD attending faculty. As a prosthodontist, I enjoy teaching the residents and giving consultation. The school currently has no Graduate Prosthodontics Program and therefore the AEGD residents often end up with many complex prosthodontic cases. I think it is a great opportunity to expand the AEGD program and to look into the mechanism to care for these complex patient population. There are also numbers of improvements that Dr. Kevin Noall-Director of AEGD program has implemented. I took the opportunity to include digital impression, CADCAM, as well as 3D printing into the AEGD program. It has been a wonderful experience for me and the residents.
Third, our implant program, I have teamed up with Dr. George Deeb, VCU Director of Dental Implantology. We had for the first time established protocol and streamlines our computer-aided implant treatment planning and guided implant surgery in both DDS and Graduate levels. I created our DDS4 selective course, Applications of 3D Printing in Dentistry. It is the first of this kind in the DDS level. So far we have had over 50 implant cases planned and placed using 3D printed guides at VCU. Our in house 3D printers-Form 2 from Formlabs work extremely well with our 3Shape Implanr Studio. We recent published our work in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Link to Our most recent published work!
Finally, the most enjoyable part of my job, not long after I got to VCU, I was approached by several students enquiring a research project. I also worked with fellow faculty to co-mentor several students. Three of my VCU students, Adam Staffen, Devang Patel and Georgi Talmazov all have received the most recent (2016-2017) AD Williams research fellowship. Adam and Devang presented their work at the 2017 IADR meeting. I am also still mentoring a few UNC students. One of them, Riley Allen also presented his work at the IADR. As part of the implant program at VCU, I have enjoyed the opportunity to mentor senior oral surgery residents, AEGD students as well as our senior dental students. It has been the most rewarding experience.
I am especially proud of our dental students and residents. I appreciate all the support from the faculty and staff at VCU. And most importantly I feel very blessed and thankful to be here.
