2021 Volume 37 Issue 2 Pages 56-62
Abstract The School of Dentistry at Iwate Medical University launched an educational reform project with Harvard University in 2011 and established a student dental clinic as part of the project. We report an analysis of the patient trends at the clinic over the past 7 years.
The subjects consisted of 484 patients who visited the clinic between May 2012 and March 2019. The treatments of the patients were divided into six types in accordance with the Harvard University Case Classification, and the age of the patient at the initial visit, treatment progress, treatment period and reason for discontinuation were surveyed. The following results were obtained.
1) Approximately half of the patients were aged 60-70 years old.
2) Many cases were Types Ⅲ and Ⅴ including prosthetic treatment.
3) The treatment period for Type Ⅳ was lengthy at roughly 35 months, and differences in the level of difficulty of cases were evident.
This study revealed that the establishment of the student dental clinic enhanced our curriculum for clinical training through participation in treatment. However, problems such as formulating a standard for selecting suitable cases for students and maintaining an adequate number of cases were raised, requiring further reform.
