Thank you for your interest in Northwest Dental Residency. This is a fairly new residency, with the first class enrolled in July 2006. The sponsoring organization is the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, a large multi-site community health center located in Central and Eastern Washington. The residency sites are at YVFWC clinics in Yakima, Spokane, Toppenish, Grandview and Walla Walla, plus at two partnering community health centers: Columbia Basin Health Association in Othello and Puget Sound Neighborhood Health Clinic in Seattle.
Each resident is assigned to one clinic but does travel to various rotation sites. There are 13-16 positions open each year. We offer a stipend of $40,000 plus a $3,000 housing allowance. Our co-sponsoring organization is the University of Washington School of Dentistry. We have had a senior externship program with the UW since 1989, and we are also the sponsor site for their expanded pediatric dentistry residency that began in 2005 at a new clinic we built for it in Yakima.
The University’s GPR Residency shares most of the seminar courses via video conferencing, with others being done by local specialists and dentists. We have rotations in the following areas: pediatric dentistry (will link with the pediatric dental residency program), public health (mobile clinic services), special-needs patients (adults and children), medical, and practice management.
One of our goals is to give residents the experience of dentistry in a multi-chair/multi-assistant environment to better prepare them for future practice. Each resident will be assigned a mentoring dentist who will have a one-on-one relationship with the resident during the year. The mentoring dentist will be responsible to ensure the resident is assigned the appropriate cases and professional experiences desired.
We teach a strong behavior management philosophy to pediatric dentistry and will offer experiences in oral sedation. We offer rotary endodontic care and offer a rich experience in endodontic treatment that includes molar endo. Our patient population is primarily low-income with tremendous restorative (amalgam when needed, but a majority of posterior composites) and oral surgery needs. A resident will be able to treat a large number of medically compromised patients and have a variety of removable prosthodontic cases to work on. Like many AEGD programs, the number of available patients for fixed prosthodontic cases is limited, but we feel we can offer a good selection of those as well. If you would like an idea of the numbers of the various services our residents have done, let us know and we can supply that information.
I am currently a member of the Washington State Dental Quality Assurance Commission, the regulatory board for the state, so we think it’s important to give residents a very practical and up-to-date view of ethics, risk management and quality of care issues.
Recently the state of Washington passed legislation to offer a dental license to anyone who successfully completes an AEGD in our state. They are still working out the details of that legislation. Residents are required to have a Washington resident license. You would not need to meet any additional criteria beyond what we require for the residency to apply for a resident license.
It is difficult to explain the full experience we offer in one short message. If you would like we could discuss the program further by phone, a good number to reach me at is (509) 949-2278. I can call you as well if you send me your contact information.
Thank you for your interest!
Mark Koday, DDS
Director, Northwest Dental Residency
2205 West Lincoln Ave.
Yakima, WA 98902
Phone (509) 949-2278
Fax (509) 575-3397