Wyatt Hume DDS, PhD, dean of University of Utah School of Dentistry in Salt Lake City, spoke to Becker's about the future of dentistry and importance of arming students with knowledge to take on the dental world.
Editor's note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Question: Through the lens of a dental school dean, what does the future of dentistry look like?
Dr. Wyatt Hume: Oral disease continues to be a major problem for human populations worldwide, adversely affecting not only oral comfort, functionality and appearance, but also overall health and well-being at enormous social cost. Investments in both oral health promotion and restoration of functionality, when required, bring great benefits to individuals, families and communities. Human dietary patterns worldwide are now such that both caries and periodontal disease are ubiquitous, yet both diseases are entirely preventable. Oral cancer continues to pose risks across all populations. Those things taken together create the circumstances for a very secure and socially essential future for the dental professions. They also place a significant burden of responsibility on those of us who work to create the oral health workforce of the future.
Q: What is the most important thing you are preparing your students for?
WH: There will clearly be a major need throughout each graduate’s professional lifetime for both aggressive preventive and curative interventions for caries, periodontal disease and oral cancer. Although we continue to hope for a reduction in overall oral disease through these efforts, there will also almost certainly be a continuing and major demand for reparative and restorative oral health services. Technologies of care will continue to change, very probably at a rapid pace. The boundaries between oral healthcare and overall healthcare will increasingly soften and blur as we increasingly demonstrate the beneficial effects of oral health on overall health. So in dental education we strive to develop knowledge and skills within our graduates that will prepare them for immediate, effective contributions to oral healthcare, and healthcare overall, as it is today and tomorrow, while also ensuring that they have the scientific background and skills to accurately evaluate and adapt to the many changes and advances that will arrive during their working lifetimes.