Dr. Laura Kaufman is Published in the Journal of Physician Assistant Education
Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of General Dentistry at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) Dr. Laura Kaufman was published in the March 2015 edition of The Journal of Physician Assistant Education for her paper “Introduction of an Interprofessional Oral Health Curriculum.” The paper discusses a novel approach to teaching oral health to physician assistant (PA) students, which Dr. Kaufman and her co-authors have been implementing at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) for the past year.
“Physician Assistants often work in underserved areas with patients who may not regularly see a dentist,” said Dr. Kaufman. “A PA might be the only medical professional some of these patients see. Our program aims to equip them with the skills necessary to do basic screenings, oral cancer assessments, and provide basic oral health education to the patients.” The training will also help PAs identify oral health problems early so that they can provide timely referrals to dentists and specialists.
Dr. Kaufman, along with co-authors Director of Research and Assistant Professor of Medicine at BUSM Dr. Oren Berkowitz and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at BUSM Dr. Matthew Russell, started incorporating oral health education into the PA curriculum during the 2015–2016 academic year. The new curriculum increases the total hours of oral health instruction for the students from a national average of just 3.5 hours, to 12 hours.
Dr. Kaufman said, “Since PAs are often on the front line when it comes to medical treatment of underserved patient populations, we realized there was a major deficit in their oral health training. Often, their oral health training only consisted of a few hours throughout the course of their entire program.” She continued, “The new oral health curriculum we put in place increases that training nearly fourfold.”
Embracing a truly interprofessional environment, Dr. Kaufman and her colleagues invited several dental students to help teach oral screenings and oral health assessments to the PA students during the year. The program has been well received by the PA students and dental students alike. “It was great to see the dental students working with the PA students,” Dr. Kaufman said. “It’s always encouraging to see the students learning from each other. We hope to increase the dental student participation in the course in the coming years.”
Dr. Kaufman and her colleagues received a grant from the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants Foundation in partnership with the National Inter-professional Initiative on Oral Health to get the program off the ground.
Dr. Kaufman’s paper can be found in the March edition of the Journal of Physician Assistant Education or online.
The DMD 17 students who helped teach screenings to the PA students were: Swati Agnihotri, Jing Guo, Jonathan Kuang, Jimmy Li, Parnian Paymozd-Yazdi, Krizia Prioa, Wenyu Qu, and Lihsin Wu.