New Ideas Session

Educational Programs, Workshops, Seminars, New Idea Session, and Small Group Discussions

TL-028 - Dental Local Anesthesia Training for Medical Professionals Using Innovative Techniques

Presenter(s)

• 

  Scott Howell, D.M.D., M.P.H.

  Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health

Target Audience: Faculty

Learning Focus: Teaching and Learning

Dental Education: Anesthesia  

In 2015, the Health Policy Institute reported that dental emergency department visits reached 2.18 million people in 2012. Opioid related deaths are also on the rise. Emergency departments are looking for alternative methods for controlling dental pain without prescribing narcotics. For short term pain management, emergency department medical providers are turning to dental local anesthesia. Training for dental local anesthesia techniques is almost non-existent in medical training programs. Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health has designed an innovative dental anesthesia training program for medical providers and has taught this course to physician assistant (PA) students and practicing PAs and nurse practitioners.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe a dental local anesthesia course for medical providers with focus on a program that has constraints such as the amount of time and educators available.
• Identify educational tools to aid in the safe and innovative approach to teaching dental local anesthesia that do not require injecting other students with needles.
• Apply lessons learned from the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health's dental local anesthesia course to develop a course for students at his/her own institution.