Why Oral Medicine is an exemplary choice for specialty? A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to describe a narrative review of the literature for understanding the reasons behind Oral Medicine gaining popularity as a choice for post graduate specialty training. Oral Medicine is the intersection of medicine and dentistry, and the clinicians are responsible for the management of oral mucosal disease, salivary gland dysfunction and oral manifestation of systemic disease, and facial pain in the definition of oral medicine and hence having a wide range of responsibilities. Breadth of knowledge on medically complex patients for example, rheumatologic, cardiovascular, cancer, endocrine, immuno-deficiency patients is required, which makes it an extremely interesting specialty and enables the clinicians to provide interdisciplinary care to the patients. It is important for dental education to foster new techniques in learning and preparing the students for clinical skills prior to patient care. The scope of impact of Oral Medicine has increased over the years, leading to it gaining popularity amongst dentists to take it up as a specialty training. The future direction of the study will be to understand how to enhance the research, clinical practice, and education for Oral Medicine.