Here at Louisville, we have six residents, three first year and three second year. Residents are here for 24 months. The program is both didactic and clinical. About 60% of the time they're in the clinic working on patients, and the remainder of the time is made up of other activities.
One of the biggest, both drawing points and unique parts of this program are how clinically based they are. Most programs put you through a lot of rigorous academia and research. This both incorporates that, but also make sure that you come out with really great hands skills and a lot of really great knowledge on the clinical side of endodontics.
Louisville offers several things that many other areas don't. It is a metropolitan area, so you have a wide draw of patients, and so we tend to see a high number of patients compared to many other endodontic programs.
When the residents leave here, they're very well prepared. The number of cases that they're able to do; pretty common here for residents to complete 300-400 cases by the time they're finished with their program. Even more important for that, preparing them, it would be the strength of our faculty. We have almost a dozen part-time faculty that come in and help teach in the clinic, and that allows the resident to have an exposure to a wide variety of modes of practice.
Here the faculty are all extremely approachable, very knowledgeable. Most of them have been in practice for decades, and that's amazing to be able to draw from their experience both here at the school and also their private practice experience.
Our radiology program is very strong here. We have a lot of cone beam CT units available to us. So I think our residents are some of the better trained residents in the use of cone beam CT, which is extremely important in endodontics today.
We learn to evaluate and acquire three-dimensional images in a way that I think many other residencies don't. And I think that gives us a big leg up.
So we work inside with the main goal: safety.
In all the areas of dentistry, we constantly talk about evidence-based dentistry. Research here is a requirement of the program, and we allow each resident to choose their own project. In doing a research project, a resident actually learns all the specific steps of the scientific method, and they actually learn how to assess other research projects or publications, in that they are able to take a research publication and pick it apart and decide whether it's valid for their practice or if there's weaknesses or strengths resulting from that project.
This program historically has been very diverse, which is an excellent, excellent experience. We have applicants from all over the world.
Residents come here with various backgrounds themselves and different experience levels, and each resident learns early on that they rely on each other as well as the faculty.
This program has a very welcoming culture, a very mentorship-driven culture. So we have a lot of camaraderie in our unit over here where you can ask questions and you're not afraid to try to do complex things that maybe you couldn't have a while before that.
The culture is just everybody getting along, having a great time at work.
Louisville is a really nice city. My wife and I live outside of town and there's really nice trails and things of that nature that we do with our kids.
Something I really had no idea also about Louisville is how amazing the food scene is here. I've experienced so many incredible restaurants. I've had some of the best food of my life here in Louisville, which is incredible.
You would be hard pressed to find a better program than here at UofL and I think you're going to come out an amazing endodontist and have a really great time while you're here.
