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Hello All,
To all of those D4’s out there getting ready to graduate who aren’t yet sure about your plans for next year and would like a chance to get some more significant real world experience before getting out into private practice, or maybe who don’t feel quite as confident as they would like to be in their clinical abilities / decision making / treatment planning – I remember what that was like, I was there too – I’d like to talk to you about an opportunity to get some of that experience, training, and mentorship that you might be concerned you didn’t get in your time at dental school.
I’m the director of the NYU/Langone AEGD Program in Visalia, California, based out of Family HealthCare Network, one of the top three largest community health centers in the country. We usually take two residents, and one of my spots opened up unexpectedly, so I’m trying to reach out to interested candidates to discuss what our program has to offer. I’m very proud of my program – I did this residency myself after I graduated, and I felt like it turned me into the much more confident and competent dentist that I am today. I’ve been running this program since 2016 and our residents usually really value and enjoy their experience here, so much so that over 50% of our residents end up staying on to start their careers here at our health center.
I strive to make my AEGD Program as little of a 5th year as dental school as possible. We integrate our residents into our health center team, and my goal is to turn new graduates into the type of confident jack-of-all-trades style of dentist who can easily step into a private practice or health center role – something that I actually consider as a high standard. I very much value autonomy for my residents – you have your own chair, your own assistant, your own scheduler, your own patient population – while still having support and backup that helps you push your boundaries, and though we try to minimize it, knowing that if you really get in over your head, there is always an eject button to have us bail you out. We have three main faculty (including myself) that work side by side with our residents every day, at the desk next to you, in the operatory next door, who are always available to provide feedback and advice for your cases. I value the close working relationship I have with my residents, and I am not the type of director who is up in his ivory tower, down the hall somewhere in their office that you don’t see very often.
Now, every program is very different, and sometimes it can be hard to tell based on the list of programs on PASS, so I really like to spend time talking with candidates to let them know about or program, both so that we can see if you are the right candidate for us, but also importantly so that you can see if we are the right program for you.
We keep our residents busy, starting off seeing 4-6 patients a day, eventually ramping up to seeing 6-10 patients a day or more. Our residents usually average over 100 patients a month. We have no shortage of patients, and you have a scheduler to help make your schedule. I know one of the most frustrating things in dental school can be getting patients to be willing to pay for treatment – but as a health center in CA, nearly all of the work we do for the vast majority of our patients is at no cost to them through Denti-Cal. Crowns, Root canals, fillings, extractions, cleanings, SRP, exams, dentures, partials, (with some exceptions and guidelines) at no cost for most of our patients. This lets our residents do a lot of work without being limited by that financial component.
Every program has strengths and weaknesses, and I like to be very open and transparent about everything we my program.
Strengths:
- We do lots of restorative, we get very comfortable managing deep caries, direct and indirect pulp caps, and tricky restorative scenarios.
- We do lots of endo – this is probably one of our biggest strengths, our residents are usually scheduled at least 3-4 RCT’s a week.
- With endo comes a decent amount of crowns - We are usually using Zirconia or Emax, but occasionally PFM
- We do lots of extractions, and our residents get good at doing triage, pain management, quick emergency diagnosis, and think on your feet treatment planning
- With extractions comes a decent amount of removable dentures and partials – I personally love removable, and do my best to simplify and un-confuse what can be a very confusing and frustrating area of dentistry.
- We get comfortable working on medically compromised and complicated patients – more on that below
- Significant Mentorship. We work closely together every day, while still giving you the independence you need to grow as a practitioner. This is not a fifth year of dental school.
- Most patients do not have to pay for most treatment, removing the financial component from most treatment plans, and allow residents to do a lot of good work.
Weaknesses:
- We don’t do Ortho – though NYU usually offers an option Invisalign training course through the year that residents can do at no cost
- We don’t do a lot of complicated perio procedures – while we do some straight forward gingivectomy and occasionally crown lengthening, we don’t usually do perio surgeries like connective tissue grafts
- We don’t do a lot of impacted thirds – it depends on the situation, we do occasionally, but we usually will refer out to a surgeon that is at no cost to our patients.
- We don’t place implants. As much as we’d like to be, our health center is of the opinion that we have so many patients that need so many other services, so we haven’t invested in this yet, though we do occasionally restore implants.
While we don't have specialists, we do have a team of general dentists with a wide range of experiences, and we try to keep as much in house as possible, but we do occasionally refer out complicated cases.
Our residents also get very comfortable working on medically compromised patients – most of our patients are also medical patients of our health center, so it is nice to be able to have access to their full medical records, and we also are able to work hand in hand with our other allied health professions. It’s great to be able to easily make a quick phone call to our health center down the street to talk to the OBGYN of the pregnant patient in our chair with a high risk pregnancy when we want to know a bit more about their situation before doing an emergency extraction. It’s nice to be able to walk a few feet down the hall and ask a medical provider about some new medication a patient that just came out and how it might interact with something we’re trying to give a patient. We can also get chairside INR and Blood Sugar, which is super handy for patients on blood thinners of uncontrolled diabetics. Long story short – our residents leave knowing how to properly manage patients that many people in private practice wouldn’t be willing or comfortable to treat.
Our health center is able to provide us with modern equipment, and I do like working with new materials and techniques. We have an endo microscope, a diode laser, sectional matrices, bioceramic materials like MTA and modern Composites like Activa (game changing). We just got new endo motors, apex locators, and wireless warm vertical obturation units. I really like using all ceramic crowns like Zirconia and Emax, and though we’re still using traditional impression techniques, we’re looking at getting into scanning possibly in the future. We work with local fixed and removable labs, and I like my residents to get that direct communication with their lab techs.
Now about Visalia – where the heck is it? I had never heard of Visalia before I came up here for my residency after living in Southern California most of my life, so I don’t blame you if you haven’t either. Visalia is in the California Central Valley, smack dab in the middle between LA and San Francisco, about 2 hours from each. Visalia is a city of about 150,000 people that is growing fast – Amazon just built two massive facilities here (yay same day or next day delivery), and they are about to open a SECOND Costco (just think of all of the muffins!). We’ve got a great walk-able downtown with lots of restaurants, shops and boutiques. We’ve got all your standard big box stores, two movie theaters, an outlet mall just outside of town. Lots of great restaurants of a variety I would not have expected. Pretty much the only thing we don’t have is a Trader Joe’s (boo), but they’re about to open an Aldi and Sprouts, and there’s a TJ’s in Fresno about 40 minutes away. For the outdoor activity lovers, Visalia is just below Sequoia National Park – home of the world’s largest tree – and lots of great sights, hiking, and camping. We’re also not too far from Yosemite National park. Visalia also has some of the lost cost of living prices for a good size city in California. My favorite thing coming from So-Cal is that there is NO TRAFFIC – sigh, so amazing. We’re close to Fresno International Airport, where you can usually get a connecting flight to anywhere else in the country. It’s a great place to live, and though I totally expected to be here for a year and leave back to So-Cal, I’m still here and loving it.
NYU / Langone has a pretty standard pay and benefits package with medical/dental/vision that you can check out on their website, and you get something like 20+ PTO days, so you can have plenty of time to travel and go on trips. I also usually take our residents to at least one big dental convention. At the moment, our schedule is usually 7:30-5:30 Monday – Thursday, and a half day on Friday. Our residents usually never work nights or weekends (minor rare exceptions like faculty coverage or volunteering for a health fair), and are NEVER on call. Don’t fear having the pager and enjoy your weekends!
Thanks for taking the time to read what ended up being a long essay about my program – I hope you can tell that I’m very passionate about what we do here, and teaching and training our residents to be able to take their career to the next level – just like this program did for me. If you have any other questions, please ask here or message me directly, I’ll be more than happy to answer anything I can. If you’re interested in applying, I can forward your information onto our regional NYU/Langone team to start the process. Though the window is narrowing, I think we still have time for an on time July 1st start.
One disclaimer – As per NYU/Langone guidelines, we are unfortunetly only able to take graduates from US or Canadian Accredited Dental School Programs.
To all of those D4’s out there getting ready to graduate who aren’t yet sure about your plans for next year and would like a chance to get some more significant real world experience before getting out into private practice, or maybe who don’t feel quite as confident as they would like to be in their clinical abilities / decision making / treatment planning – I remember what that was like, I was there too – I’d like to talk to you about an opportunity to get some of that experience, training, and mentorship that you might be concerned you didn’t get in your time at dental school.
I’m the director of the NYU/Langone AEGD Program in Visalia, California, based out of Family HealthCare Network, one of the top three largest community health centers in the country. We usually take two residents, and one of my spots opened up unexpectedly, so I’m trying to reach out to interested candidates to discuss what our program has to offer. I’m very proud of my program – I did this residency myself after I graduated, and I felt like it turned me into the much more confident and competent dentist that I am today. I’ve been running this program since 2016 and our residents usually really value and enjoy their experience here, so much so that over 50% of our residents end up staying on to start their careers here at our health center.
I strive to make my AEGD Program as little of a 5th year as dental school as possible. We integrate our residents into our health center team, and my goal is to turn new graduates into the type of confident jack-of-all-trades style of dentist who can easily step into a private practice or health center role – something that I actually consider as a high standard. I very much value autonomy for my residents – you have your own chair, your own assistant, your own scheduler, your own patient population – while still having support and backup that helps you push your boundaries, and though we try to minimize it, knowing that if you really get in over your head, there is always an eject button to have us bail you out. We have three main faculty (including myself) that work side by side with our residents every day, at the desk next to you, in the operatory next door, who are always available to provide feedback and advice for your cases. I value the close working relationship I have with my residents, and I am not the type of director who is up in his ivory tower, down the hall somewhere in their office that you don’t see very often.
Now, every program is very different, and sometimes it can be hard to tell based on the list of programs on PASS, so I really like to spend time talking with candidates to let them know about or program, both so that we can see if you are the right candidate for us, but also importantly so that you can see if we are the right program for you.
We keep our residents busy, starting off seeing 4-6 patients a day, eventually ramping up to seeing 6-10 patients a day or more. Our residents usually average over 100 patients a month. We have no shortage of patients, and you have a scheduler to help make your schedule. I know one of the most frustrating things in dental school can be getting patients to be willing to pay for treatment – but as a health center in CA, nearly all of the work we do for the vast majority of our patients is at no cost to them through Denti-Cal. Crowns, Root canals, fillings, extractions, cleanings, SRP, exams, dentures, partials, (with some exceptions and guidelines) at no cost for most of our patients. This lets our residents do a lot of work without being limited by that financial component.
Every program has strengths and weaknesses, and I like to be very open and transparent about everything we my program.
Strengths:
- We do lots of restorative, we get very comfortable managing deep caries, direct and indirect pulp caps, and tricky restorative scenarios.
- We do lots of endo – this is probably one of our biggest strengths, our residents are usually scheduled at least 3-4 RCT’s a week.
- With endo comes a decent amount of crowns - We are usually using Zirconia or Emax, but occasionally PFM
- We do lots of extractions, and our residents get good at doing triage, pain management, quick emergency diagnosis, and think on your feet treatment planning
- With extractions comes a decent amount of removable dentures and partials – I personally love removable, and do my best to simplify and un-confuse what can be a very confusing and frustrating area of dentistry.
- We get comfortable working on medically compromised and complicated patients – more on that below
- Significant Mentorship. We work closely together every day, while still giving you the independence you need to grow as a practitioner. This is not a fifth year of dental school.
- Most patients do not have to pay for most treatment, removing the financial component from most treatment plans, and allow residents to do a lot of good work.
Weaknesses:
- We don’t do Ortho – though NYU usually offers an option Invisalign training course through the year that residents can do at no cost
- We don’t do a lot of complicated perio procedures – while we do some straight forward gingivectomy and occasionally crown lengthening, we don’t usually do perio surgeries like connective tissue grafts
- We don’t do a lot of impacted thirds – it depends on the situation, we do occasionally, but we usually will refer out to a surgeon that is at no cost to our patients.
- We don’t place implants. As much as we’d like to be, our health center is of the opinion that we have so many patients that need so many other services, so we haven’t invested in this yet, though we do occasionally restore implants.
While we don't have specialists, we do have a team of general dentists with a wide range of experiences, and we try to keep as much in house as possible, but we do occasionally refer out complicated cases.
Our residents also get very comfortable working on medically compromised patients – most of our patients are also medical patients of our health center, so it is nice to be able to have access to their full medical records, and we also are able to work hand in hand with our other allied health professions. It’s great to be able to easily make a quick phone call to our health center down the street to talk to the OBGYN of the pregnant patient in our chair with a high risk pregnancy when we want to know a bit more about their situation before doing an emergency extraction. It’s nice to be able to walk a few feet down the hall and ask a medical provider about some new medication a patient that just came out and how it might interact with something we’re trying to give a patient. We can also get chairside INR and Blood Sugar, which is super handy for patients on blood thinners of uncontrolled diabetics. Long story short – our residents leave knowing how to properly manage patients that many people in private practice wouldn’t be willing or comfortable to treat.
Our health center is able to provide us with modern equipment, and I do like working with new materials and techniques. We have an endo microscope, a diode laser, sectional matrices, bioceramic materials like MTA and modern Composites like Activa (game changing). We just got new endo motors, apex locators, and wireless warm vertical obturation units. I really like using all ceramic crowns like Zirconia and Emax, and though we’re still using traditional impression techniques, we’re looking at getting into scanning possibly in the future. We work with local fixed and removable labs, and I like my residents to get that direct communication with their lab techs.
Now about Visalia – where the heck is it? I had never heard of Visalia before I came up here for my residency after living in Southern California most of my life, so I don’t blame you if you haven’t either. Visalia is in the California Central Valley, smack dab in the middle between LA and San Francisco, about 2 hours from each. Visalia is a city of about 150,000 people that is growing fast – Amazon just built two massive facilities here (yay same day or next day delivery), and they are about to open a SECOND Costco (just think of all of the muffins!). We’ve got a great walk-able downtown with lots of restaurants, shops and boutiques. We’ve got all your standard big box stores, two movie theaters, an outlet mall just outside of town. Lots of great restaurants of a variety I would not have expected. Pretty much the only thing we don’t have is a Trader Joe’s (boo), but they’re about to open an Aldi and Sprouts, and there’s a TJ’s in Fresno about 40 minutes away. For the outdoor activity lovers, Visalia is just below Sequoia National Park – home of the world’s largest tree – and lots of great sights, hiking, and camping. We’re also not too far from Yosemite National park. Visalia also has some of the lost cost of living prices for a good size city in California. My favorite thing coming from So-Cal is that there is NO TRAFFIC – sigh, so amazing. We’re close to Fresno International Airport, where you can usually get a connecting flight to anywhere else in the country. It’s a great place to live, and though I totally expected to be here for a year and leave back to So-Cal, I’m still here and loving it.
NYU / Langone has a pretty standard pay and benefits package with medical/dental/vision that you can check out on their website, and you get something like 20+ PTO days, so you can have plenty of time to travel and go on trips. I also usually take our residents to at least one big dental convention. At the moment, our schedule is usually 7:30-5:30 Monday – Thursday, and a half day on Friday. Our residents usually never work nights or weekends (minor rare exceptions like faculty coverage or volunteering for a health fair), and are NEVER on call. Don’t fear having the pager and enjoy your weekends!
Thanks for taking the time to read what ended up being a long essay about my program – I hope you can tell that I’m very passionate about what we do here, and teaching and training our residents to be able to take their career to the next level – just like this program did for me. If you have any other questions, please ask here or message me directly, I’ll be more than happy to answer anything I can. If you’re interested in applying, I can forward your information onto our regional NYU/Langone team to start the process. Though the window is narrowing, I think we still have time for an on time July 1st start.
One disclaimer – As per NYU/Langone guidelines, we are unfortunetly only able to take graduates from US or Canadian Accredited Dental School Programs.
