For 120 years, Danbury Hospital's mission in western Connecticut and nearby New York has been to advance the health and well-being of people in the community in partnership with those we serve. The hospital works to achieve outstanding performance through patient care, education and outreach that combine to offer high quality, advanced technology and exceptional service to support patients and their families. Solucient, a leading national source of health care business intelligence, has placed Danbury Hospital among the 100 Top Hospitals© for better patient safety, shorter length of stay and lower mortality (death rate) than its peer hospitals.

ANATOMIC AND CLINICAL PATHOLOGY RESIDENCY

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The residency program in pathology (AP-CP) and laboratory medicine provides residents the opportunity to participate in patient care, teaching rounds, and conferences. Faculty from Yale University School of Medicine joins our staff to conduct teaching conferences, as well as in depth symposia. Residents can learn to interpret flow cytometry and gene rearrangement studies in our state-of-the-art molecular pathology laboratory. Residents can pursue subspecialty electives at Yale-New Haven Hospital, forensic pathology and toxicology at the Office of the Medical Examiner in Farmington, and tissue typing in Farmington, American Red Cross.

Residents interact with other specialties:
Danbury Hospital is strongly committed to medical education. The hospital trains residents in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, Dentistry, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, Ob/Gyn, Pediatrics and Psychiatry. Hospital-sponsored allied health educational programs include Medical Technology, Radiology Technology, Surgical Technology, and a Dietetic Internship.

The residency program in AP/CP is the oldest residency at Danbury Hospital, accredited since 1958. Our residents interact in a multitude of ways with other Housestaff and attending physicians in all of the hospital's departments and residency programs. These interactions include a variety of clinicopathologic correlation in the form of clinical rounds, formal clinicopathologic conferences, delivery of laboratory consultative services such as frozen sections, blood product transfusion requests, and transfusion reactions, coagulation studies, bone marrow aspiration/biopsies, and various tumor. Our residents also serve on a number of multidisciplinary Hospital committees, including Bank Committee, Medical Education Committee, Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, and Infection Control and Ethics Committee. The above activities allow for a wealth of exposure of our residents to the whole spectrum of the health care delivery system, as well as providing for plentiful interactions with housestaff from our institution's other residency programs and attending physicians.

GENERAL PRACTICE RESIDENCY IN DENTISTRY

The General Practice Residency (GPR) in Dentistry is a one-year clinical and didactic program sponsored by Danbury Hospital. The Commission on Dental Accreditation accredits the program, and a certificate is awarded upon completion of the program. Three residents are accepted to the program each year.

Educational Objectives
The program is designed to meet standards for GPR programs as established by the Commission on Dental Accreditation. Upon successful completion of the residency, it is expected that the resident will demonstrate competencies in the following areas:

1. Diagnosis and treatment planning relating to a diverse population with a special emphasis on development of prognostic skills, risk/benefit and its effectiveness within a framework of informed consent.
2. Perform effectively as a dental and interdisciplinary team member in caring for patients at the interface of medicine and dentistry in a hospital setting.
3. Critical evaluation of professional literature including presentation to the attending staff.
4. To attain experience in the medical assessment of patients, which will allow residents to make decisions on hospital admissions, patients receiving care under general anesthesia in the hospital's operating room, and the need for consultation.
5. To provide additional responsibilities that broaden resident interest and experience in teaching, administration, research and continuing education.
6. Provide the general practice of dentistry consistent with attending general/specialty staff didactic presentations and clinical supervision.
7. Function as an educational resource in the treatment or referral of patients as a community service.

Work Environment
All regularly scheduled patients are treated at the Seifert & Ford Family Community Health Center located in downtown Danbury. The 20,000-sq. ft. medical and dental facility also houses Danbury Hospital's outpatient centers in Adult Health, Pediatrics, Geriatrics and Community Medicine. The 5,000-sq. ft. dental facility is fully equipped with ten operatories, Panorex, resident office, Internet access computers and intra-oral camera. Rotations in anesthesiology, medicine and emergency medicine are completed at Danbury Hospital, which is located approximately one mile from the Seifert & Ford Family Community Health Center. A complete dental suite is available for in-house and emergency patients at Danbury Hospital.

Clinic Schedule
General practice dental residents are assigned to regular clinical schedules from Monday through Friday, to include one evening for the purpose of direct patient care activities under the supervision of attending staff. Block schedules are maintained in dental specialties of oral and maxillo-facial surgery, periodontics, endodontics, pedodontics. Orthodontics is taught on a consultative basis. Residents provide comprehensive dental services to a broad spectrum of the population, including the mentally, emotionally and physically handicapped and the elderly.

Supervision
Attending general practitioners and specialty staff supervise general practice dental residents during the regular hours of operation of the Dental Service. When on call, they are responsible to the ED staff, the oral and maxillo-facial surgeon on call and the program director or designee.

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This article is reported with thanks to Danbury Hospital.