V.A. Medical Center, Augusta, GA - Charlie Norwood

The Dental Service of the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia sponsors an American Dental Association accredited Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) residency program. The twelve-month training, which was established in 2008, begins approximately July 1 and currently accepts four residents each year.  The residency is designed to provide the recent dental graduate with an instructional curriculum in general dentistry with the following overall goals.

1. Act as a primary care provider for individuals and groups of patients. This includes: providing emergency and multidisciplinary comprehensive oral health care; providing patient focused care that is coordinated by the general practitioner; and directing health promotion and disease prevention activities.
2. Plan and provide multidisciplinary oral health care for a wide variety of patients including patients with special needs.
3. Manage the delivery of oral health care by applying concepts of patient and practice management and quality improvement that are responsive to a dynamic health care environment.
4. Function effectively and efficiently in multiple health care environments within interdisciplinary health care teams.
5. Apply scientific principles to learning and oral health care. This includes using critical thinking, evidence or outcomes-based clinical decision-making, and technology-based information retrieval systems.
6. Utilize the values of professional ethics, lifelong learning, patient centered care, adaptability, and acceptance of cultural diversity in professional practice.
7. Understand the oral health needs of communities and engage in community service.

The resident has the opportunity to gain experience in the dental disciplines of restorative, oral surgery, prosthodontics (fixed and removable), endodontics, periodontics, and implant dentistry. Clinical experience in pedodontics and orthodontics is not offered at this time. For oral surgery experience, the resident has clinical rotations with the faculty of the Augusta University Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.  There is currently no research component of the program.