The online Dental Practice Readiness Curriculum (DPRC or Practice Ready for short) addresses the challenge of learning dental practice economics and management during the pre-doctoral dental school years, in spite of compressed curricula and limited time for non-clinical topics. It is the only totally web-based educational program of its kind available anywhere.

Who developed the program and why? How many dental schools are using Practice Ready?
 

• The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Dentistry began working on the DPRC in 2004. The program evolved from lessons learned in conducting a national study funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on assisting small organizations to employ strategic planning for achieving and maintaining sustainable operations.
• It was created for San Antonio dental students. Licensing fees have been kept at the lowest level possible to allow (1) periodic upgrading of the information content and the effectiveness of the educational tool, (2) continuous technical maintenance of the program in today’s Web environment requiring frequent adjustments to new browsers, operating software and user preferences. Dental Schools currently using the program found the adoption of Practice Ready cost effective when considering the saving of faculty and class time and the possibility of distributing a charge, usually less than that of an average technical book, among the students.
• In 2017, the Practice Ready curriculum is used in seven dental schools.

Was DPRC tested outside the San Antonio School of Dentistry before being shared with other dental schools?

Yes. In 2009, the DPRC was evaluated by the School of Dentistry of the Medical College of Georgia, the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry, the Department of Professional Studies of the University of Las Vegas School of Dental Medicine and by Howard University’s College of Dentistry during a collaborative six-month project. Results were reported in a two-hour symposium at the 2010 American Dental Education Association (ADEA) national meeting in Washington, D.C.

What products and services are included in a DPRC license agreement?

• Access to the program by students and faculty during the school year.
• Continuous technical vigilance and support. Rapid turnaround response (usually within 24 hours or less) to technical questions.
• Software updates.
• Access to the authors of the program by email and phone.
• Scheduled interaction with interested current users.
• Training sessions (regardless of the number of faculty or sessions needed).
• Feedback telephone conferences, periodically scheduled at users’ preferences. operation.

Is a short description of DPRC available?

Yes, it is provided below.

• The Dental Practice Readiness Curriculum consists of four sequential levels of learning corresponding to progressively higher levels of students’ competence over the four years of dental school.
• It applies the methodology of strategic planning, first, to personal and professional aspirations and, then, to dental practice. The modular organization of the program allows different groupings of the learning material, the compression of the curriculum in less than four years and the customization of the program to meet special didactic needs.
• DPRC uses online self-learning, cases, and virtual practice environments to complement or substitute classroom meetings. In keeping with the preferences of today’s students, course materials may be explored and tasks completed "anytime, anywhere."
• The following visual displays a summary of the Practice Ready curriculum.
  
  
  ( NOTE:  Adobe Flash must be enabled to view the presentation)
  
  
• The DPRC website contains all the educational material traditionally used in class lectures, with enhancements and links only possible online. The online quizzes are graded by the program. Scores are returned to students immediately after submission.
• Bulletin board announcements are posted and archived online.
• A self-assessment tool, titled "My Progress," keeps track of completed assignments, informs both students and instructors about them and doubles as navigation tool.
• A CV/résumé builder is accessible from most pages for recording events and accomplishments soon after they occur. The entries are automatically organized to produce a professionally looking, short résumé or a detailed CV as needed.

Which educational domains are addressed by Practice Ready?

• Dental Economics: Understanding the economic forces producing dental practice financial successes and failures.
• Dental Practice Management: Exploring, understanding and applying best methods for developing a dental practice that realizes the dentist’s aspirations while providing the best oral care possible to patients.
• Practice Policy: Addressing dentists’ responsibilities to society, patients and the dental team while building practice success.
• Dental Informatics: Developing the skill of searching, retrieving, organizing and using data from patients care, dental team activities, professional, economic and social sources.
• CODA standards 2-09, 2-10, 2-16, 2-17, 2-18, 2-20, and 4-6/g.
• Professionalism.
• Personal finance and personal debt.
• Dental ethics: the awareness and understanding of ethics in dentistry.
• Behavioral sciences: developing the skill of interacting with personnel and patients.

What are some notable educational characteristics of the program?

• The DPRC provides an estimated 128 hours (32 hours per each level/year) of comparable class time via faculty-assisted self-directed learning. Interactive learning and assignments are online and do not require extensive classroom sessions. Discussion seminars and presentations by invited speakers may be added as valuable complements of the knowledge foundations created by the program. The program emphasizes professionalism, critical thinking and problem solving.
• DPRC didactic objective is the acquisition of key non-clinical skills for excellence in providing financial and psychic rewards to the dentist, creating value for patients, offering opportunities to personnel and contributing to community welfare.
• The "discovery" approach for developing personal finance and practice management skills is more effective than mere study directives and induces better retention of essential knowledge and skills. Students become more prepared to control student debt, to take on practice ownership or to offer market-valued competencies when seeking associateships, entering military or public health careers, joining the faculty of a dental school or pursuing other career choices.
• The DPRC four-level progressive learning guides students, first, to develop a strategic plan for achieving personal and professional goals; then, to apply the strategic planning approach to address the dental practice challenges likely to confront them after graduation.

At Level 1, students complete a career strategic plan and draft a personal budget to support it and to manage debts.

At Level 2, they apply what they learned about mission and vision statements, goal setting, strategies and personal finance to drafting a strategic plan for a virtual dental practice.

At level 3 they add to the plan personnel oversight, patient management and business finance. Additional topics are a guide for selecting and securing an associateship, an overview of ergonomics and chair-side techniques to avoid the onset of neuromusculoskeletal pain.

At Level 4,the dental students learn how to select a practice location, explore Q&A’s on transition to practice, are introduced to the Wall Street Journal as a source of financial information, and produce a business plan good enough to support a viable proposal for a loan, using the work done at previous levels. The business plan testifies to the level of competence in dental practice economics and management that is attained with the Practice Ready curriculum and rarely found with new dentists.
 

• Every DPRC assignment is preceded by pertinent learning material, supported by guidance and further clarified by examples, a "Help" section and rubrics.
• An online grading facilitator shorten the time needed and simplifies the task of grading students’ performance.

What results can educators expect from using the program?

• Easier and productive student-teacher communication.
• The availability of effective aids for creating early students’ awareness of professional goals and for promoting financial responsibility and debt management. Then, a comprehensive approach for planning dental practice that builds on that early learning experience.
• Since in dentistry, more than in other health professions, personal and professional lives are closely related and intermingled, DPRC offers powerful teaching tools for combining the building of key dental practice competencies with personal/professional maturity.
• Effective and consistent assistance throughout the program for inducing students to adopt the rational, evidence based, conceptual framework of strategic planning to support decision making. After completing the Practice Ready curriculum, students are better prepared to face, after graduation, the complex economic, financial and personnel challenges that many practitioners resolve only through costly trial and error.

How many faculty hours are needed to teach the DPRC?

• • DPRC facilitates the successful utilization of part-time clinical faculty with interest but not experience in practice management and the involvement of practicing dentists with interest but not experience in teaching. An interactive section "Instructor Companion" facilitates instructors’ familiarity with the program and simplifies monitoring and evaluating students’ progress.
• The program provides flexibility in allocating faculty time to individual schools’ needs. Faculty time may vary from a minimum of two- to four-hour class time per learning level or eight- to sixteen- hours for the whole program if only coordination, advice and evaluation are provided. Longer allocations of thirty-six or more hour may be used to offer class lectures, seminars and invited speakers.

Have there been scholarly reviews and presentations of the DPRC?

Yes. In the past seven years, the DPRC instructors where coauthors of the following:

• A poster presentation at the 2009 American Dental Education Association (ADEA) national meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
• A two-hour symposium at the 2010 American Dental Education Association (ADEA) national meeting in Washington, D.C.
• A videotaped seminar, a separate workshop and a TechExpo table at the 2012 ADEA national meeting in Orlando, Florida.
• Roundtable discussions with DPRC users at the 2014 ADEA national meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
• A TechExpo table in the program of the 2015 ADEA meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Currently, all DPRC faculty and administrators are coauthors or contributing reviewers of a scholarly paper on the DPRC educational experience for publication in peer- reviewed journals.