The CU Anschutz School of Dental Medicine recently opened their new state-of-the-art Dental Advanced Simulation Hub (DASH) to provide their students with hands-on experience practicing dental skills prior to working on patients in the campus dental clinic. The new dental lab includes 42 student simulation stations distributed across eight collaboration pods. Each pod represents a virtual multi-dentist practice staffed by students who collaborate to create and manage it via a shared website. This provides a simulation of the entire patient/provider experience and gives students experience managing a practice with colleagues, providing another layer of career preparation. Each student manages their own patients, represented by avatars, who provide opportunities opportunities to work with a complex mixture of social, medical, and dental histories; as well as challenges that develop in response to student’s treatment decisions over the course of the program. Each simulation station includes a dental light, curing light, intraoral camera, power/data, monitor, and adjustable height ‘patient’ head and torso dental simulators to allow students to provide dental services that they will find in a typical dental clinic. Each dental simulator and avatar can be customized to represent a range of cultures, skin tones, dialects, and socioeconomic factors to further the experience of working with diverse patients.

The DASH lab integrates scanning, designing, milling and 3D printing stations to support digital dentistry technologies needed for clinical care settings. Shared lab resources include intraoral x-ray boxes and digital sensors, digital scanners, milling machines, and furnaces to create simulated crowns, implants, and other fabricated dental work.

The lab has transformed how the School of Dental Medicine prepares their students for working with live patients in the campus dental clinic and better prepares students for their careers.

RELEVANT FEATURES

• Renovation
• Occupied Building Throughout Construction
• Dental Program
• Coordinated Selection & Procurement of
• Dental Furniture & Equipment