Canadian Laboratory Owner Tackles Training Crisis Head-on

In 1998, Prowest Dental Laboratory was growing, but like most laboratory owners, Chang Kim was faced with the challenge of finding skilled technicians to do the work.

Instead of simply lamenting the problem, he took a proactive approach to increasing the pool of qualified technicians in his region: he started the Prowest Dental Training Institute, a one-year program that has since graduated 22 students from Canada, the United States and Korea.

The program's philosophy is to train students to be able to handle real-world cases without additional training as soon as they finish the program. Although part-time instructors teach the program, Kim is very involved and meets with instructors every morning to discuss the day's lesson plan. "Many times, the person who runs a college or designs curriculum is not a working technician," says Kim. "But because I'm in the lab every day, I know first-hand the challenges...