best lifestyle of dental specialities?

[vortexfilez]

Ortho, Endo or OMFS??

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[teehee69]

Oral Pathology

 

[omfsing]

Ortho, Endo or OMFS??

It’s honestly depends on how much you want to work. All specialists have good lifestyles and all general dentists have good lifestyles after working for a few years. Choose the speciality which you enjoy and you can create the lifestyle you want.

PS lifestyle during Omfs residency can really suck but that’s short term.

 

[periopocket]

Ortho - no emergencies

 

[qdogmillionaire]

Ortho - no emergencies

One time my tongue actually got caught on my bracket while eating and we had an emergency visit where they removed and reapplied a band to release my tongue- haha freak accident- something they had never seen before

 

[jda02624]

Ortho - no emergencies

One of my operative instructors told me that the only real emergency in ortho is when the patient's check bounces.

 

[deleted659902]

oral rad. literally a sit back and relax kind of specialty (in a rather dark room)

 

[4thgen]

Ortho - no emergencies

I would disagree, my dad is an orthodontist and he constantly has people call him about problems with their braces and sometimes has to go in on weekends to fix them.

 

[periopocket]

I would disagree, my dad is an orthodontist and he constantly has people call him about problems with their braces and sometimes has to go in on weekends to fix them.

Very Interesting, thanks for sharing, I was unaware.

 

[maxillofacialradiologist]

Radiology : )

 

[2TH MVR]

I would disagree, my dad is an orthodontist and he constantly has people call him about problems with their braces and sometimes has to go in on weekends to fix them.

In 27 years of practice ... I've only been called in for a REAL emergency ...... ONCE. A patient of mine was in a serious car accident and I was asked to go to the hospital to remove the braces. One time. Uno. There are no real emergencies with ortho. Sounds like your dad needs to educate his patients on what a real emergency is .... and also have his staff answer after hour emergency calls.

 

[navirpid]

Also a lot of ortho "emergencies" that occur after hours can be handled by an assistant, then the orthodontist can see them on Monday

 

[charlestweed]

Also a lot of ortho "emergencies" that occur after hours can be handled by an assistant, then the orthodontist can see them on Monday

This is not allowed in my state. The assistant can only work under the direct supervision of a licensed dentist and he/she must also be a registered dental assistant (RDA) and completes 25 CE units every 2 years.

Like others have said, most ortho emergencies can be managed over the phone by the receptionist. However, I always try to make the patients happy (because I need their referrals) by offering to fix loose brackets as soon as I can. So if the patient really wants his/her “emergency” to be taken care of, he/she has to drive to the office location (I have 4 offices) where I work at. A lot of times, the patient don’t want to drive to my other office locations because they are too far. So they just wait until their next appointment. By making it more inconvenient for the patients (ie to drive farther, to miss a day of work etc), it helps teach the patients to be more careful with what they are supposed to eat and not eat.

To minimize getting a lot of emergency calls, I don’t place TADs, I don’t use bulky things like Herbst, Jasper jumper, MARA, Pendulum etc. I band all the molars instead of using the bondable tubes. I am a low overhead guy but when it comes to bracket bond strength, I use the best and the most expensive adhesive material… 3M transbond for brackets and 3M Ketac for bands.

 

[charlestweed]

IMO, the specialty that has a lot of easy procedures, little doctor’s time spent for each patient, flexible hours, fewer post op complications, fewer emergency calls, young healthy patients with no medical problem…..and most important of all, produces a lot of money is the best lifestyle specialty. You can’t have a good lifestyle without having a good stable income. You can’t have a good lifestyle when you barely make enough to pay bills, student loan debt, and to support your family. Oral pathology and oral radiology seem like an easy profession but I don’t know how much the pathologist and the radiologist make and how easy it is for them to find jobs.

 

[maxillofacialradiologist]

IMO, the specialty that has a lot of easy procedures, little doctor’s time spent for each patient, flexible hours, fewer post op complications, fewer emergency calls, young healthy patients with no medical problem…..and most important of all, produces a lot of money is the best lifestyle specialty. You can’t have a good lifestyle without having a good stable income. You can’t have a good lifestyle when you barely make enough to pay bills, student loan debt, and to support your family. Oral pathology and oral radiology seem like an easy profession but I don’t know how much the pathologist and the radiologist make and how easy it is for them to find jobs.

Why would you say radiology or pathology seem like easy professions without knowing about it?

 

[charlestweed]

Why would you say radiology or pathology seem like easy professions without knowing about it?

Nope, I don't know anything about pathology and radiology. I just trusted what Teehee69 said on post #2 and you said on post #10 were true.

 

[4thgen]

In 27 years of practice ... I've only been called in for a REAL emergency ...... ONCE. A patient of mine was in a serious car accident and I was asked to go to the hospital to remove the braces. One time. Uno. There are no real emergencies with ortho. Sounds like your dad needs to educate his patients on what a real emergency is .... and also have his staff answer after hour emergency calls.

My dad really cares about his patients and how they feel with their braces, what he might consider an emergency might not be the same for you. I guess that says something about the quality of care you give...

 

[2TH MVR]

My dad really cares about his patients and how they feel with their braces, what he might consider an emergency might not be the same for you. I guess that says something about the quality of care you give...

I would like to think that your dad is a good orthodontist. You know nothing about me. What I can surmise from your remark is you are just an immature kid. Your comment regarding your dad seeing a lot of emergencies is ludicrous. Good orthodontists typically don't have numerous emergencies. Think about it and goodbye.

 

[4thgen]

I would like to think that your dad is a good orthodontist. You know nothing about me. What I can surmise from your remark is you are just an immature kid. Your comment regarding your dad seeing a lot of emergencies is ludicrous. Good orthodontists typically don't have numerous emergencies. Think about it and goodbye.

Just curious, when a patient calls you on a weekend with a wire poking their gums or a broken bracket, do you tell them cut it with a wire cutters? Or to suffer through the weekend?

 

[Captain Underplants]

Just curious, when a patient calls you on a weekend with a wire poking their gums or a broken bracket, do you tell them cut it with a wire cutters? Or to suffer through the weekend?

Not an orthodontist, but it would be insane to cut my weekend short and come into the office for a wir poking someone in their gums... that's not an emergency. They can get a piece of wax and cover it to make it a little comfortable, but that's nowhere near an emergency...

 

[charlestweed]

Just curious, when a patient calls you on a weekend with a wire poking their gums or a broken bracket, do you tell them cut it with a wire cutters? Or to suffer through the weekend?

Before dismissing the patient, the assistant or the doctor should check to make sure the wire is not poking or ask the patient if he/she feels any poky wire. For certain anterior retraction cases, the doctor or assistant needs to inform the patient that the wires may poke through the end of the molar tubes a few days after the office visit....and this can easily be dealt with by using the ortho wax.

Patients need to be educated that a broken bracket is NOT an emergency (it usually doesn’t cause any discomfort). Since ortho tx is a long 2-year process, a broken bracket is not gonna delay the tx if not repaired right away.

There are a lot of ways the doctor and the assistants can do to minimize ortho emergency calls and to keep the patients happy. The more you communicate with the patients, the less emergency calls you will get. It has to be a 2 way thing…. a good caring doctor and good cooperative patients. The doctor can’t just come in to take care of broken brackets on kids, who don’t follow the food list and eat things that they are not supposed to eat. I don’t charge for bracket repairs but I know many other offices do. If I were not in a competitive area, I would probably charge for bracket repairs also. I think it’s a good policy because it helps encourage the parents to tell the kids to be more careful with their appliances.

Patient education is very important. Of course, there are always a few unreasonable parents/patients in every office who demand unreasonable things….and that's enough to ruin your day. Well, running a business is stressful.