School’s Out for Summer? (Not!)
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! July and August are traditionally times when many vacation or at least adopt a “school’s out” mindset. For many of us involved in Advanced Education Programs in Endodontics it can be quite the opposite. This time represents the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. Orientation for our incoming class of residents occurs as our second year class is graduating. During the month of July new residents are busy in “root camp” working on extracted teeth and learning to do everything through the microscope. Added into this mix, July is also the time when most programs, including ours at Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, conduct interviews of candidates for the class that will start the following July.
We hold our annual Endo graduation party in last week in June. It is attended by most faculty, the graduating residents, the rising 2nd year residents and the new incoming 1st year class. The high point of the evening is when each graduating resident is expected to attach their engraved brass nameplate on the most recent “RSDM Endodontic Family” plaque. A series of plaques, dating back to the first graduate of the program in 1962, are kept on display in the Program Director’s office. With great anticipation, and likely hampered by a beverage or two, each resident demonstrates their final act of manual dexterity affixing the plate to the plaque with tiny brass screws. … Cue up the applause, photos, speeches, and inevitable tears. Former residents are invited to return for this ceremony and repeat the ritual upon becoming an ABE Diplomate, when an engraved star is added to their nameplate and they again get too pick up the screwdriver.
I recall with fondness when it was my turn to affix my nameplate to the original “Endodontic Family” plaque 40 years ago (we’ve now nearly filled the fifth of these plaques with graduates)! I truly felt like I had become part of a special family of shared knowledge, experience, and culture. My endodontic family has now expanded well beyond my original New Jersey Dental School/Rutgers School of Dental Medicine family. It now encompasses all of the talented folks I have worked with in AAE Leadership, AAE committees, the Foundation Board and committees, other endodontic educators, the AAE staff, and so many members I have met at AAE functions. We share a passion for the patients we care for, for the art and science of endodontics, and for each other.
When a class of residents “flies from the nest” it’s always interesting to see where they land. Three members of our Class of ’23 will be associating with private endodontic practices in the metro NY area. One will work part-time in an endodontic practice in CT that recently sold to a specialty DSO, while also working towards a Master of Public Health degree at Yale. The other is associating with a fee-for-service endo practice in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles.
After two years of exposure to our department’s culture, our graduated residents readily adopt this role of being a member of our endodontic family. The vast majority make an effort to stay in touch, keeping us up to date on life events, practice situations, their progress with their ABE exams, or just to discuss interesting cases. It is heartwarming to see that they are thriving and very happy with the career they have chosen.
The culture that we promote, with emphasis placed on service to the AAE and the community, support of our Foundation for Endodontics, as well as the importance of becoming a Diplomate of the ABE, is shared by many Directors of Advanced Education Programs in Endodontics around the country. This culture bodes well for the future of our specialty and for future leadership of the AAE. The Directors of Advanced Education Programs in Endodontics are the focus of this year’s AAE Educator Workshop. I look forward to seeing them in Phoenix August 24 – 26, where we will also hold our Corporate Community Conference and host our residents at APICES.
Non educators may not be aware that applications to Advanced Endodontic Programs in Endodontics have been trending up over the last decade. AAE23 had record student attendance, many of whom were trying to improve their chances at admission to an advanced education program by attending endo CE or gaining “face time” with program directors. The application pool is robust and the competition is stiff. Our experience at RSDM is that the number of outstandingly qualified applicants increases annually, but still, there are limits to how many candidates any one program can interview.
I contrast this to the situation when I began teaching pre-doctoral endodontics part-time in 2001. At the time I was on the clinic floor with general dentists, prosthodontists and periodontists. I regularly encountered attitudes expressed that endodontics was a “dying specialty” and that endo surgery was sacrificing bone needed for the inevitable implant. Endo residents nowadays are considered the “cool kids” in our school. It is so satisfying to see how the pendulum has swung back in favor of dentists, as well as patients, valuing natural dentition and acceptance of the fact that peri-implantitis is a real phenomenon, and not some myth created by endodontists. … And we can credit the AAE for taking a very active role in making the public aware of the importance of saving natural teeth!
The future of endodontics is bright!