The Orthodontic Clinic Experience

The Graduate Orthodontic Clinic is in operation five days every week. During this time, five separate and distinct "Clinical Teaching Teams", functioning one-half day each week, instruct the graduate students in variously modified approaches to treatment utilizing the edgewise mechanism. The students also spend approximately three days each week in Specialty Clinics, staffed by additional "Teaching Teams": The Orthognathic Surgery, Mixed Dentition and TMJ Clinics, operate one-half day each week; the Cleft Lip/Palate and Advanced Orthodontic Clinics which alternate one-half day every other week in the second year.

Since it is the philosophy of the Department of Orthodontics to expose the student to as many varied clinical experiences as is both possible and practical, his or her clinical exposure is both extensive and immediate. Almost immediately after his or her arrival into the Program, each student begins treatment for approximately 25 patients in need of comprehensive therapy. At the end of his or her first year he or she will have also begun treatment for approximately four patients in need of orthognathic surgery, ten to fifteen patients in the Mixed Dentition and Functional Appliance Clinic, and 1-2 TMJ cases. At the beginning of the second year, six to eight patients will be assigned in the Craniofacial Anomalies and Cleft Palate Clinic. Therefore, each student will be directly exposed to and responsible for the treatment of between forty-eight and fifty-seven active treatment patients during the first year of the training program. In addition, approximately forty active transfer patients will be assigned in the second year. These patients are carefully screened and selected from the many orthodontic examinations that are conducted each year.