But the deans and Jackie Boyden, vice dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, shared some other noteworthy facts about health care trends, the changing faces on campus and priorities for the coming year, among other things. The School of Medicine is meeting the national goal to graduate at least 50 percent of students trained in primary care. While managed care has profoundly affected the practice of medicine, the cost-cutting trend that has led physicians to form medical groups and hospitals to merge has not impacted dentists as much, according to Charles Bertolami, dean of the School of Dentistry. The dental profession is still very much a cottage industry. The main reason cited by students nationally and at UCSF for enrolling in dental school is the desire for professional autonomy, Bertolami said.
Good salaries are also an incentive driving interest in the oral health sciences.
The demand for dental services is high, due in part to increasing numbers of cosmetic procedures in oral health, the influx of immigrants needing care and the aging of America, Bertolami pointed out. The dental school itself has 14 dental clinics, which are not part of UCSF Stanford Health Care, and sees about 135,000 patients per year, Bertolami noted. Jane Norbeck, who has served as the dean of the School of Nursing through the transition of four chancellors over a decade, announced last year that she will step down from that post to return to research and teaching this summer. About half of the PhD and postdoctoral students enrolled are women, according to Cliff Attkisson, dean of the Graduate Division, a program started 35 years ago. They already are a vast proportion of the students on campus, even if we factor out the School of Nursing.