Dentistry, Nursing, and Medicine: A Comparison of Core Competencies

Abstract

Health care, including oral health care and oral health education, is under great stress in the United States. The cost of and access to care, the cost of dental education, and a shortage of educators have led leaders in dental education, organized dentistry, and the public sector to underscore the problem. One of the proposed solutions is to find synergies and new health care and education models by building bridges among the health professions. One potential solution is being implemented at the NYU College of Dentistry (NYUCD). Dentistry and nursing are seemingly unrelated professions, and they are rarely if ever modeled together. That is about to change with the joining together of NYUCD and the Division of Nursing of the NYU Steinhardt School of Education in creating a College of Nursing within the College of Dentistry. This process has not been without controversy. Following the Division of Nursing's request to join NYUCD, and the subsequent announcement of the proposed combination by NYU in December 2004, some members of the dental profession responded by questioning the appropriateness of the merger and the similarity of the two programs. Nevertheless, substantial parallels exist in the education and practice of dentists and nurse practitioners (NP) including basic, social, and some clinical science education, practice models, research synergies, and community service. However, similarities in the core competencies of these professions have not been analyzed formally and in detail. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to compare the core competencies of nurse practitioner and dental education programs. The results show a surprising overlap of the core competencies of the dental and nursing professions (38 percent partial or total overlap). A similar overlap with medicine also exists, albeit lower (25.4 percent). These results are notable because they demonstrate that the three health professions, independently of one another, developed very similar basic competencies and learning objectives. These data should encourage other health professions programs to seek new collaborative models for education, beyond the current silos of training, and new health care delivery systems as has been strongly recommended by the Institute of Medicine. Such collaborative education redirects health care toward providing truly interdisciplinary comprehensive primary care for patients.

How Do Dental and Prenatal Care Practitioners Perceive Dental Care During Pregnancy? Current Evidence and Implications

“…The development of perinatal oral health guidelines for all prenatal care practitioners is urgently needed to ensure consensus on oral health education, assessment, and referrals during the prenatal period. Another avenue to increase dental knowledge is to incorporate oral health components into undergraduate medical, nursing, and midwifery curricula , which will ensure that oral health becomes an integral part of normal practice for future prenatal care practitioners.…”

Midwives and oral health care during pregnancy: perceptions of pregnant women in south‐western Sydney, Australia

“…To address this issue, nursing and midwifery faculties in USA have incorporated oral health into their curricula to strenghthen this area of health care (Kerr et al. 2004, Spielman et al. 2005, Clemmens & Kerr 2008).…”

Role of oral physician in Indian public health system

“…• The fi elds of medicine, dentistry and nursing have shown to have independently evolved similar and comparable basic competencies and learning objectives. [9] Given the severe shortage and misdistribution of human resource in Indian public health systems an interprofessional education and collaborative practice model as proposed by the World Health Organization could be considered [10] • The National Oral Health Policy of India was drafted 20 years ago in 1995 and piloted in 1999 in fi ve Indian districts. The initial focus was on primary prevention through health education.…”