Oops. I didn't phrase that very eloquently when I talked about "top shelf" vs not top shelf work. I definitely can't make a judgment on that without seeing your work in person. If you say it's good then I accept that. I guess it was more a reaction to all of your talk about how you are lazy and how easy ortho is etc. That just doesn't sound like something a quality focused clinician would say, but you are probably the exception.
I have lots of close friends and relatives in various stages of dental and medical school training. Med school simply is not much much harder to get into. Baloney. At my dental school the difference in GPAs is less than one tenth of a point. You think one tenth of a point makes a big difference in either the quality of the applicant or in the difficulty of achieving acceptance? The answer is no, it does not. And DO school is definitely easier to gain acceptance than most dental schools.
In order to maintain the success of your business, you always have to do your best to keep your patients and referral GPs happy. Reputation doesn't happen overnight. This is important, especially when you are practicing in a very competitive area. You can't make a bad chow fun dish, if you set up your restaurant in Chinatown area.
When I said my patients are not picky, I meant they trust me and let me do my job. They don't ask me a lot of questions so I have more time to focus on patient treatments. They don't demand a loose bracket to be repaired at the time and day of the week that they want. They don't look up stuff on the internet. They don't dictate the treatments etc.
I've said ortho is easy because I compare my kind of work to those of my MD brother, my MD anesthesiologist cousin, my family physician, my general dentist friends, my pharmacist sister-in-law etc. If you divide these healthcare professionals' incomes by the total number of hours that they work, I think we, orthddontists, make the most $$$ per hour. I stand by my earlier statement that ortho is an overpaid specialty.
The reason I want my kids to pursue medicine instead of following my footstep is I am afraid they will think like most of the new grad orthos: no medicaid, no insurance, FFS only, rich patients only, no working on Saturdays and Sundays, spending $500k to set up a practice etc. It's hard to succeed as an orthodontist with this mentality. It's not their fault....it's mine because I spoil them. They don't even know how to wash dishes and do chores around the house because I am afraid they will not have enough time to study. The only sacrifice they've made is they study a lot harder than most of their classmates.
My newphew is applying for dental school right now. He took calculus, gen chem, and bio classes at a community college. He then transferred to one of thhe UC schools in CA. His GPA and DAT score are just ok and so far, he has received 5 dental school interviews. His cousin (my niece) got a 3.9 GPA and the MCATscore of 517....and all the med schools in CA that she applied to rejected her. She got accepted to an out-of-state med school. If you have last name Patel, Nguyen, Tran, Chang etc, you have to have much higher stats in order to get in.
Edit: I came in earlier today and I've just soldered this quad helix. It's not the most beautiful looking, most symmetrical looking quad but I am sure it does the job fine. I'll see my first patient at 2pm (15 minutes from now) and I should be done 3.5 hours later....what a wonderful profession!
Edit 2: It's 5:52PM now....and I am already at home watching the Thursday Night football game.
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