Dental Clinics, Meeting a Need with No Dentist explores a training program to provide people trained in dentistry, but who did not attend four years of dental school, to low-income hard to access communities. The article brings up the same sorts of issues with professional organizations and those who practice as I’ve read about with midwives and the college of obstetricians and gynecologists. What do you do when the professional organization perceives itself as looking out for the health of the people, but seems to be only looking out for the wallets of those it represents?
April 28th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Some care is better than no care, I say. And dental insurance is something that even many people with health insurance don’t have.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Reminds me a bit of nurse practitioners, who can do basic treatments and some prescribing and are “under supervision” by a doctor but may be working in a separate location. Did the AMA object when that idea first came around, I wonder?
April 28th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Apparently the AMA still objects….