This entire course shows everything that you need to know about Basic Instrumentation, Ideal Class II Amalgam Preparations, Ideal Crown Preparations, Composite Restoration, Inlay and Onlay, and Removable Partial Denture Designs. Teaching you the correct techniques and providing you tips, we hope that you will be equipped with the right skills to pass the bench test.

Why is bench test important?

• According to Sturdevant, “A prerequisite for understanding tooth preparation is knowledge of the anatomy of each tooth and its related parts, both internal and external: the direction of the enamel rods, the thickness of the enamel and dentin, the size and position of the pulp…” So by only looking at your work, the examiners can rightfully know that you have the adequate knowledge of all the principles about tooth preparations. In other words, the prep itself will show that you really know what you are doing! Also, this test will also show the quality of your dexterity in terms of accuracy and efficiency that every dentists should have.

I want to start early but do not know where to start

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• Well, since practicing for the bench test needs a lot of time, deciding earlier to practice for the bench test is the most ideal scenario. So I commend you for that. About where to start, you start on practicing for preps on cavity and crowns because most likely these are the preps that is often asked of you to do. Start on preparations for cavities first then to crown preparations. From there, practicing to more complicated preps, like Onlays and Inlays will be easy.

The course is organized in a way that you can easily follow through from basic instrumentation to demo proper. So with that, welcome to this course!

Help! I have only three weeks left to practice!

• OK, most often after you’ve gotten a call or notice from the school, you’ll have approximately three weeks to prepare until the big day. Not to scare you, but the ideal time for practicing the bench test is more than 3 weeks because truthfully speaking practicing the bench test is difficult and takes a lot of your time. But anyway, the fact that you have decided starting to practice now is better than not starting at all, right? Our focus is to use our time wisely. Thus, time is of the essence! You will find everything that you need here in the course and to organize everything in schedule, please refer to the guide below.

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Regarding cavity preparations, which tooth do I start?

• The recommended sequence of the tooth to practice on is: (1) Lower Molar, (2) Upper Molar, (3) Upper Premolar, at the least. Doing a lower premolar will depend on the school that you will be in.
• Regarding Lower Molar cavity preparation, it is the largest prep that you could possibly do. It is relatively easier to do based on its anatomy (like the outline form is not divided by an oblique ridge in between) compared to other molar teeth. Since the cavity is large, it will also be a starting ground to gauge where your hand skills stand as well. So if you have perfected the lower molar cavity prep, you may proceed on doing the lower second molar before proceeding to upper molars.

Which type of crown preparation to start practicing on?

• Start with full gold crown preparation. First you have to established how to do a good chamfer before starting on making shoulders. Developing the skill to make a good shoulder is very difficult if you haven’t mastered doing a good chamfer yet.
• Making full gold crowns will be your starting ground to develop the hand skills needed for crown preparation. After you have done it so well, until then we could expand it further into practicing a nice good shoulder margin on PFM crown preparation.
• Full gold crown preps are only made on molar teeth.
• For PFM crown preps, the recommended sequence of teeth to practice is: (1) Upper and Lower Molars, (2) Upper Centrals (3) Upper Premolars, (4) Upper Canines, (5) Lower Crowns

Why Principles of Tooth Preparation are Important?

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• A cavity or a crown preparation looks like that because of the principles behind it. Thinking that, “Oh there are different kinds of teeth, and there are a lot of preparation designs to memorize.” is a bad way of thinking at all. Remember that a cavity prep is a cavity prep and a crown a prep is a crown prep. Though thinking that there are many things to remember, all of it boils down to a common denominator: the principles. If you take into heart the principles, and you perform it very well, you can perform preparations on whatever tooth be so easily.

How Do I Submit My Work For Feedback?

• Guidelines for Submitting feedback as seen on page
• How to take good photos
• Example of a poorly taken picture for feedback submission

How do I get my feedback back?

• You will receive an email notifying you when your feedback is ready & you can view it from here.
• You’ll identify your feedback by the video title, it will end with your initials
• Feedback processing time is on average 3 days.

I have a question, what do I do?

• Please post your question on our Discussion Forum. Dr. Alyssa answers all member’s questions there.
• If you have a question regarding a particular module or page, you can just comment on the page as well.
• Please use the forum rather than emailing Dr. Alyssa with the question especially if it’s bench test related – if you’re wondering, we probably have other members curious about the same thing as well, so we try to answer questions openly

I want to use a different nickname

• Sure that’s easy, click here to change your username

Some things that would be beneficial for you to know

• We expect you to work hard and we are here to help. We will follow up with you if we don’t hear from you for a while. Please let us know how things are going for you.
• Your success is our priority, and we value your feedback to make your experience better. Any suggestions you have, or difficulty you run into using our course area, please let us know. We take this very seriously.