Team Patients: Patient Recruitment for Dental Board Examinations

Abstract Upon completion of their education and training, dental and dental hygiene students must take the National Board Dental Exam (NBDE) in order to practice. A portion of the board exam includes performing procedures on live patients. The patients must meet specific criteria to qualify for the exam, and it is the responsibility of the examinee to find their own patient(s), be certain that they qualify, and to make sure that the patient(s) shows up on exam day. Failure to do so would result in an automatic failure of the exam. Examinees are limited to the number of times they can take this exam and can wait up to one year to become licensed if they were to fail. Currently, there is no common, streamlined way for examinees to find patients. At the moment, examinees screen their friends and family, ask local dentists for assistance, and even post on sites such as Craigslist in hopes of finding patients to screen and ultimately find their qualifying patient(s). Team Patients exists to serve as a patient recruitment service for these students looking to find patients for their exams. We screen and identify ideally qualified patients for the boards while minimizing the stress and anxiety of the patient recruitment process for examinees.