Clinical medicine for dental students.

A program in clinical medicine for dental students was introduced at the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in 1974. Instruction in medical topics is delivered throughout the dental curriculum. Faculty and patient resources of the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Medicine, and the adjacent New England Medical Center Hospital are used. The ten-year evolution of this program is described in relation to the problems that had to be overcome. A survey of alumni indicated that the graduates who had taken the program felt better trained in physical evaluation techniques and reported higher frequencies of detecting medical problems in their patients than those who had not.