Dalhousie dentistry report highlights poor treatment of hygiene students

The registrar for the College of Dental Hygienists of Nova Scotia says dentistry students are sometimes given preferential treatment over dental hygiene students, a relationship highlighted in a recent task force investigation into complaints of sexism at the school.

The report,released Monday, found a long-standing inequality in the way the two groups are treated.

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• Read the full report from the task force

The external task force says fourth-year dentistry students learn a "culture of entitlement " that includes first choice of incoming patients.

The report says "the needs of dental students have higher priority and dental hygiene studentsare finding it increasingly difficult to complete their clinical training."

The college's registrar,Patricia Grant, says dentistry students usually win when there's competition for patients.

"Certainly if there aren't enough to go around, it appeared from time to time that preferential treatment was given both by staff and by decisions made within the faculty," she said.

Petition circulated

The task force was appointed following the publicizing of a Facebook page called the Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen, in which fourth-year male dentistry students' posted violent sexual comments about female classmates.

When the suspended male students returned to the dental clinic in March, they had priority, says the report.

"We were told that some dental hygiene students were unable to meet their clinical requirements," it reads.

The task force says dental hygiene students sent a petition to the dental school.

The university says the struggle did not prevent anyone from graduating. Thirty-five dental hygiene students graduated this May.

"A lot of times what we learn in a school we take with us when we graduate. So our concerns were about the profession. So if you have better collaboration, it shakes down to better care for the public," Grant said.

The report found that a 2010 review of the relationship between the two programs painted "an overly rosy picture."

"In recent years dental students have even sought to exclude dental hygiene students from the student common room," reads the report.

She says with both professions training under the same roof,there's hope of replacing what's been described as "an atmosphere of paternalism" with one of respect.