Course Description:
A comprehensive medical and dental health history is more than a collection of patient information. When integrated with the physical examination and other assessment findings, it provides the foundation for advanced evidence-based clinical reasoning, dental and dental hygiene diagnosis, individualized treatment planning, risk assessment, prognosis, and evaluation of clinical outcomes.
Contemporary periodontal care is moving beyond a model that considers biofilm in isolation. A precision-based oral-systemic approach recognizes that biofilm exists within a complex biological environment and that each patient’s systemic health, immune and inflammatory response, medications, genetics, behaviours, social circumstances, and environmental exposures can influence disease susceptibility, progression, healing, recurrence, and response to treatment.
Participants learn to identify and interpret these predisposing and modifying factors and apply them to patient-specific assessment and treatment decisions. These findings may require treatment modification before, during, or after care; influence healing and susceptibility to infection; affect periodontal disease initiation, progression, and recurrence; or indicate the need for medical consultation, clearance, referral, or interprofessional collaboration.
Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of the program, participants will be able to:
- Indicate the purpose and advanced clinical application of a comprehensive medical/dental health history in oral-systemic assessment, evidence-based clinical reasoning, and individualized treatment planning.
- Evaluate personal, medical, dental, medication, behavioural, environmental, and social information to determine its impact on patient care, risk, and required treatment modification.
- Appraise factors influencing a patient’s understanding, readiness, and informed acceptance of recommended treatment.
- Assess when medical consultation, medical clearance, referral, or collaboration with other healthcare professionals is required.
- Analyze the implications of a patient’s health status throughout all facets of the process of care—assessment, dental hygiene diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation—with particular attention to patient safety and clinical outcomes.
- Evaluate the impact of predisposing factors, including developmental, acquired, biological, systemic, behavioural, and environmental conditions, on diagnosis, disease susceptibility, risk assessment, treatment planning, and prognosis.
- Evaluate the impact of modifying factors and risk factors on host response, periodontal disease initiation and progression, healing, treatment outcomes, and recurrence.
- Analyze predisposing and modifying factors to support individualized risk assessment, prognosis, and precision-based clinical decision-making.
- The Medical & Dental Health History Training Program develops advanced clinical competencies that enable participants to integrate medical, dental, medication, behavioural, environmental, and systemic health information into evidence-based assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning, documentation, risk assessment, prognosis, and interprofessional collaboration within their respective roles and regulated scopes of practice.
