Doing humanitarian work doesn’t have to mean working abroad. You can join a group of learned people who work together as peers in the pursuit of mutual dental knowledge or practice, become a visiting professor, postdoctoral researcher or a doctoral researcher practically anywhere in the world. However, travelling to another country to extend your skills and knowledge to people in poorer countries is also a noble pursuit and may certainly be a rewarding and beneficial experience for all involved.

The Lutheran Medical Center’s  (LMC) Department of Dental Medicine journal recently published a document on Global Postdoctoral Dental Residency Programs. Dr. Valerie Peckosh wrote about the value of residency training and actual chair side experience to prepare you for your future career in clinical dentistry. When she began working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota as a general dentist, where the infant mortality rate is five times the national average, she realized she wasn’t equipped to deal with the work. She took a Pediatric Residency with LMC Dental, and is very glad she did.

The mission of LMC Department of Dental Medicine is to deliver exceptional oral health care to the world’s neediest citizens and the most underserved communities.

Dr. Le is Dental Director of Asian Health Services Dental Clinic in Oakland, California. She says, ““I would always encourage all students to take on at least one year of additional training postgraduate level. They will benefit greatly from valuable clinical experience that they will not get anywhere else, even compared to one year of private practice.” (http://lmcdental.org/Media/Default/Downloads/the-bridge-issue-2-2014.pdf)

Research by Aziz, Ziccardi and Chuang (2012) published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and done to assess the value of physicians (including dentists) who participated in humanitarian missions’ residency training and future career choices unearthed some interesting results.  All respondents reported that participation in a humanitarian mission during residency was a positive part of their training and the missions allowed them to develop as surgeons. They also believed their awareness of global health care and cultural competence improved. During the research it was concluded that participation in a humanitarian mission should be considered a required part of residency training.

So who’s out there doing the work? Dr. Kenneth Reed is a proficient pilot and humble humanitarian who regularly travels to the El Rosario area of Mexico with Flying Samaritans Arizona, a nonsectarian, volunteer organization dedicated to providing free medical and dental care to residents in remote regions of Mexico. He earned a DMD degree, a Master’s in Pharmacology, then received advanced training in anesthesia. He later completed a residency in periodontology. His achievements and credentials now fill up a 11-page curriculum vitae with honors, appointments, research and publications. What a career!

Dr. Renna Hazboun is currently a Research Fellow serving at the West L.A Veterans Affairs medical center. She works on hospital dentistry and oral surgery-related studies and was recently interviewed for a podcast featured on thepassionatedentist.com. Dr. Renna has completed two general practice residencies and an oral surgery internship at UCLA, as well as nine humanitarian dental and surgery-related trips in three different countries. She says, “My first GPR, I consider it a very strong hospital dentistry residency and that was at UCLA. We treated a group of patients in the operating room on a weekly basis. These were generally young patients, but they could be about 15 years old and anywhere to adult ages, 30, 40, even 50 sometimes. And they are usually affected with a very serious condition such as cerebral palsy or severe autism or they are in a situation where they cannot be treated in a dental clinic….(A) piece of advice that I give a lot of graduating dental students, is I really encourage them to do a GPR (General Practice Residency) or an AEGD (Advanced Education in General Dentistry). I think it’s a very valuable transition from dental school to the real world. You can learn about yourself and style of practice, or something that you are interested in. You might even find that you wanna pursue a specialty, because you’ve been given this opportunity to work with different specialties.”

So where can you do a Dental Residency or Fellowship? The Medical University of South Carolina offers a Pediatric Dentistry Residency at their Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics. Their mission includes promoting the scientific and humanitarian practice of pediatric dentistry. It’s a two-year Postdoctoral Program designed to offer a balanced clinical and didactic curriculum in advanced infant, child and adolescent dental care.

Both Dental School and residency positions are highly competitive and you will need an excellent statement in order to stand out from the crowd.

I have nearly 20 years of experience at presenting you as effectively as possible on paper for your application to dental school or a residency/fellowship position. The eloquent and thoughtful statement that I draft on your behalf will cause the admissions committee members to become curious about you, the kind of applicant that they look forward to meeting. I will take full advantage of all of your strengths, the languages that you speak and the places where you have lived or visited, along with your unique professional and volunteer experiences. I encourage you to get started on this process as soon as possible so that you are prepared for success. As soon as you fill out my Online Interview Form, I will let you know what additional questions I have so that I have all of the information that I need in order to make your statement as effective as possible.

You have worked hard to get this far. Dental school is a lot of hard work. Now comes the payoff, being able to put your skills to work in a residency or fellowship position.

As someone with a PHD in Social Ethics, I am happy to put all of my skill to work on your statement so that it demonstrates your grasp of professional values and ethics in dentistry. Where appropriate, you might want to consider mentioning one or more of the five fundamental ethical principles that guide dentistry practice: patient autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice and veracity. Principles can overlap each other as well as compete with each other for priority. Principles may at times need to be balanced against each other, but, otherwise, they are the profession's firm guideposts.

What about doing a residency in Singapore? Eastern Europe? Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland remain the best destinations for both dentistry study and treatment abroad because most faculties of Dentistry offer graduate programs, according to medicalstudyguide.com. Contact each university separately.

In Spain, they run an 11-month, full-time clinical residency in pediatric dentistry which they claim covers all the most important, practical and useful topics in the field, at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Check out uic.es for more information.