Advice for 3rd and 4th Year

[Arat]

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[Atticus]

Not sure what documentation is required at your school so this might not fully apply, but:

1. Stay organized. Make yourself a binder for all of your clinic crap. Photocopy everything that is important--- I.e. daily operative sheets that make you eligible for competency, step cards, etc. competency forms, point tallies for graduation requirements).
2. Save all of your lap paperwork-- add it to the above binder. Among other reasons, it will benefit you to have a quick go-to when you have to write the same lab script again
3. Be up front with your patients. Make sure that they understand that your graduation is dependent on them showing up for several long appointments. Tell them that the dental school setting is a place where they sacrifice time instead of money, and there is little tolerance for no showing (even if there is, tell them there isn't). In the beginning I was too nice about this and I suffered the consequences. Now that I am up front with my new patients they are much less likely to no show.
4. Don't stress about what you don't know. The time between 3 and 4th year is one of the most drastic in terms of your dental knowledge. Absorb as much as you can. Mistakes are going to happen and learn from them.
5. Don't assume crap is going to get done by schedulers, assistants, professors, whatever. Constantly follow up on things to the point of being excessive until you realize you you can cut slack on and who you can't.
6. Push yourself to go above and beyond in your 3rd year. If it means doing extra lab work when others are not, or (depending on your school) utilizing extra time in the clinic when you aren't required to-- do it. Though I am just starting my 4th year, this is something that has really set me up nicely for the next 12 months.
7. Karma is real. Don't hoard difficult graduation requirements or competency lesions if someone above you needs them to graduate-- or you might end up in their shoes come graduation. Of course there are exceptions to this, but in general try to pay if forward to upperclassmen trying to get out ASAP.
8. Professors appreciate detailed yet concise chart notes.

I think that's about it. Good luck- your life in dental school is about to get infinitely better!

 

[Atticus]

Lab* not lab (point 2)

 

[Atticus]

Dang ipad... LAB, not LAP!

 

[Rlow04]

Atticus, thanks for the solid advice, would you mind if I incorporated some of it into a blog I'm writing on Dentaltown? Here's my first post:

http://goo.gl/6pVQt

I don't know if you can view it without a dentaltown login, but if you're a dental student on SDN, I don't know why you wouldn't be on dentaltown.

 

[Arat]

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[The Anhedonia]

Thanks Atticus!

Do you think making business cards for yourself is a good idea?

if your school doesn't already provide you with business cards, i think it's not a good idea to make your own

 

[Atticus]

@rlow-- that sounds good to me!

I personally don't think you need business cards. The school will have appointment cards for the patients and you can just write your name on them as you schedule.

 

[MattBiggar80]

great advice. i was thinking about buying a scanner for my documents and now i definitely will. I plan on scanning everything.

The only thing that was off here was the karma. i know for a fact that it is 100% not true. I was at another dental school and i know for a fact that hoarding is definitely the way to go. if you catch a perfect class 2, you would be very foolish to give it up. at least 25% of the class did not graduate on time because students would hoard, and the enforcers (professors) didn't care or do anything about it.

But the karma works in an ideal/theoretical situation, not dental school

 

[Atticus]

I don't think that you should be willing to give up every single lesion that you come across if someone asks, but I can guarantee that you would hope for generosity of an underclassman if you were in need of an ideal lesion come boards time.

Classes who work together rather than hoarding will end up in much better shape come graduation than a group who hoard everything. Just wait, you'll see...

 

[MattBiggar80]

I agree with u. Working together i
Better than individually but usually it does NOT pay off. This is a social science type
Of thing.
U wrote HOPE underclass man do the same. Don't rely on hope rely on reality.

 

[Thaxil]

The best way to do well in clinic is to work on patients. I graduated from dental school with the most clinical units and felt I was prepare to leave at the end. How I was able to do so much was by staying organized, I make a word document with all patient name, number and best times to come to clinic and whether they can show on short notice. Don’t waste your clinical time fooling around or studying, you need to fill every clinical session with a patient. I think I did 20 CD by the time I graduated. Everyone hated dentures because of the work involved and that they usually have an excess demand over their requirement. However, every patient that needed a denture had one before I left. Denture patient are often retired and can come on short notice to fill a schedule. I often did not schedule them and just called them when someone cancelled. I also did a lot of cut and paste for the patient medication list Wrote up the drugs once and save it and when a similar drug was found I combine them to one write up. Just save time with everything and get down to drilling asap.

 

[Wax n Relax]

Party harder???