Prerequisites in behavioral science and business: Opportunities for dental education

There is increasing pressure on recent dental school graduates to understand and successfully utilize patient management and business management strategies to run a productive dental office. Dental schools are faced with the dilemma to either add more credit hours in their already crowded curriculum or adjust predental school requirements. All fifty-nine U.S. dental schools were assessed online to determine admission requirements in the areas of behavioral science and business education. Results show that only 11.9 percent of the schools require prerequisite coursework in behavioral science and no school requires prerequisite coursework in business. However, 64.4 percent and 30.5 percent of schools encouraged or recommended prerequisite coursework in behavioral science and business, respectively. We suggest that the dental education community involve key stakeholders to discuss the incorporation of prerequisite coursework in behavioral science and business. Additional courses in these disciplines would provide dental students better backgrounds from which the dental curriculum could build a more advanced and applied perspective to better prepare students for practice.