Dental Skillllls

[iheartz]

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Ok this question is for all the dentists out there. Im a premed student that is strongly considering dentistry and I was just wondering what kind of skills are required to be a dentist that are different from that of a physician?

 

[FSUchic]

I've been there. I was pre-med all throughout college, but decided to go dental after graduation. Physicians spend alot of time taking a history and are trained to treat the entire body. Dentistry is nice in that most problems are limited to the mouth, jaw, etc. You need to work well with your hands (hand-eye coordination), and have good spatial skills (knowing where you are in a space, good sense of direction when you can't see everything). The PAT section of the DAT tests these skills.

 

[needa20]

I was also premed all the way through college. if you are considering dentistry, i would start by shadowing a dentist or two to see if you want to explore the field more.

 

[SugarNaCl]

What I have learned is that both med and dent have to know how to diagnose and use critical thinking skills.

I think as far as skills are concerned, if you are going to be a GP (MD), you don't have to know how to use your hands that well. If you are a GDP (DDS), you not only have to work well with the hand-eye coordination stuff, but you also have to work sometimes within 0.1 of a mm. Dentistry is much more precision based than medicine... unless you are talking surgery.

Oh, and spatial arrangement is important because you have to work about 1/3 of the time or more backwards due to the mirror (not quite as difficult as it sounds after you get the hang of it, but it takes a WHILE!!!)

 

[klutzy1987]

You also need passion, not that dentistry is a fallback because you couldnt get into medical (not saying this is the case here). School is not easy and to make it through you need to love what you are doing.

 

[doc3232]

You need some magical skills of course.

 

[diagnodent]

You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

 

[iheartz]

i know what girls want...but what do dental schools want? hahaa

 

[visbimmer79]

and artistic sense!

Above all, it's easier to observe our mouth! 🙂