What's the role of a dentist in a patient's overall health?

Whether you see dentistry as isolated from medicine or integrated with it.

Written by Victoria Young, DDS · NYU College of Dentistry '24 · Penn Dental Medicine

The trap

Sticking to teeth. The whole question is an invitation to show you see a patient rather than a dentition.

How to structure your answer

Frame the mouth as part of the body → give specific systemic links → describe the dentist as often the first detector → the collaboration that follows.

Name specific connections: periodontal disease and diabetes, cardiovascular associations, adverse pregnancy outcomes, oral manifestations of HIV and eating disorders and reflux
Note dentists often see patients more regularly than physicians do
Include screening: oral cancer, hypertension, undiagnosed diabetes
Describe referral and shared care

A weak answer

What most people say

Dentists play a really important role in overall health. Oral health is connected to the rest of the body, and problems in the mouth can be a warning sign of bigger issues going on elsewhere. A dentist can catch things early and refer the patient to a physician if something looks wrong, so they're a key part of the overall care team.

Says the mouth is connected to the body without naming one actual connection.

A stronger answer

What lands

I was a CNA on a memory care unit, so I saw what happens when nobody checks the mouth. A resident stopped eating for three weeks and got a depression workup before anyone looked and found an abscess under a partial. The links run both ways: periodontal disease and diabetes feed each other, and erosion can be the first sign of reflux or an eating disorder nobody has admitted yet. A dentist sees a healthy adult twice a year when their physician sees them never, which makes the chair a sensible place for a blood pressure cuff and a cancer screen. Then the real work is picking up the phone.

Specific systemic links, a real case, and the collaboration that has to follow.

One answer knows the mouth is connected to the body. The other has watched what happens when nobody acts on it.

These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.

Reading it isn't the same as saying it.

Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.

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