Dentist I am shadowing: discouraging or honest?

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artvandelay786

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Hi fellow pre-dents,

I am an incoming senior who was planning on applying to dental school next cycle and so I have been shadowing a great deal lately in order to gain a better understanding of the profession and the day to day activities of a dentist.

Anyway, the first dentist I shadowed was awesome. He had really great relationships with his patients (many had been coming from 10+ years), was funny, seemed to do good work (but what do I know?) and recommended dentistry wholeheartedly. He was incredibly supportive and I had a lot of fun shadowing!

However, the second dentist I shadowed seems extremely pessimistic about the profession and has been actively discouraging me every time I go to shadow him. He complains that it is really hard to find patients nowadays because of the saturation (his clinic is in a suburb of a large city), that mid-levels will take all the jobs for graduating dentists, and that dentists will be out of work when some cavity cure comes out removing what he calls the bread and butter of his practice. He says that he is looking into another career within the next five years and says that dentistry is not what it is used to be.

I was really excited to become a dentist when I shadowed the first dentist. He went on vacation and so I have been shadowing this second dentist and although he seems a little bitter, I wonder if there is any truth to what he is saying? Is this possible or is it just that he is not the type of person that should have become a dentist in the first place?

I have only shadowed two dentists extensively so I have a very limited experience of the dental profession as a whole. Can someone please shed more light on what was said by this second dentist and whether there is any truth to it?

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You can plug just about any profession into your story. Different people, different opinions and outlooks. It's what you make of it. The people going in with fearful, pessimistic outlooks are likely not going to do well. Things are changing, but dentistry isn't going anywhere.
 
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I think he's being honest with you, tho i don't know a lot about the saturation situation I do hear its only a problem in certain parts of the country that are considered "desirable" locations. I personally think its great that you get to hear the good and the bad. My orthodontist has yet to tell me one bad thing since I've been shadowing, he's been making orthodontics seem like the best profession in the world!
 
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What career is the second dentist looking to get into in the next 5 years?
 
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The second one's point about midlevel providers makes no sense. MP's haven't put medical doctors out of a job, and there's more to dentistry than solely treating cavities. His area may be saturated, but there are plenty of areas begging for more dentists all over the country.

I mean, yeah, be realistic with your expectations and all, but he seems to be bitter about something.
 
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Get your DMD/DDS. Enjoy your work, and let the job/paycheck take care of itself!
 
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I think stuff like this is put on here to try to scare people.

This has to be a joke.

Obvs the dentist you are shadowing is stuck doing something he doesnt enjoy. I would shadow another one just to confirm for yourself but everyone I have talked to said they can find a job within 24-72 hours with AMAZING pay almost anywhere in the USA.
 
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I think stuff like this is put on here to try to scare people.

This has to be a joke.

Obvs the dentist you are shadowing is stuck doing something he doesnt enjoy. I would shadow another one just to confirm for yourself but everyone I have talked to said they can find a job within 24-72 hours with AMAZING pay almost anywhere in the USA.

I am not trying to scare anyone. It would be more appropriate to say that I was a bit scared. I posted a question to confirm or refute whether something in my experience (limited) was true or not true. I appreciate your response and all of the others that have posted.

Looks like I will stick with the DDS/DMD track! Just wanted to make sure that I can still have a great dental job many years from now.
 
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There's some sort of articles out there (and of my laptop somewhere) that talks about the 'new norm' in dentistry. I agree with most of it. It's just saying that things aren't what they used to be. But they're hardly abysmal. As long as you're informed and have realistic expectations, no need to let it deter you. Should things get terrible, Dr. B will be out of business and Dr. A will be chugging along.
 
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Hi fellow pre-dents,

I am an incoming senior who was planning on applying to dental school next cycle and so I have been shadowing a great deal lately in order to gain a better understanding of the profession and the day to day activities of a dentist.

Anyway, the first dentist I shadowed was awesome. He had really great relationships with his patients (many had been coming from 10+ years), was funny, seemed to do good work (but what do I know?) and recommended dentistry wholeheartedly. He was incredibly supportive and I had a lot of fun shadowing!

However, the second dentist I shadowed seems extremely pessimistic about the profession and has been actively discouraging me every time I go to shadow him. He complains that it is really hard to find patients nowadays because of the saturation (his clinic is in a suburb of a large city), that mid-levels will take all the jobs for graduating dentists, and that dentists will be out of work when some cavity cure comes out removing what he calls the bread and butter of his practice. He says that he is looking into another career within the next five years and says that dentistry is not what it is used to be.

I was really excited to become a dentist when I shadowed the first dentist. He went on vacation and so I have been shadowing this second dentist and although he seems a little bitter, I wonder if there is any truth to what he is saying? Is this possible or is it just that he is not the type of person that should have become a dentist in the first place?

I have only shadowed two dentists extensively so I have a very limited experience of the dental profession as a whole. Can someone please shed more light on what was said by this second dentist and whether there is any truth to it?
the first dentist is the "ideal" dentist, friendly, optimistic, and doesn't seem to get bothered when times are tough.

the second dentist, unfortunately, is whats wrong with this profession sometimes. you will (more often than not) get bitter and angry dentists who hate their job, plain and simple, we have a few older faculty in our school that are like that, very difficult to deal with, EXTREMELY anti-social, and its very obvious they might have been happier doing something else instead.

dentistry is not for everyone, it really requires the extroverted personality, otherwise, you will hate yourself
 
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Dentist #2 sounds lazy to me. If it's saturated try goin somewhere that it's not saturated. Maybe he has no personality or no advertising.

You can be sucessful at anything you WANT to do. If I were u I would not ever go shadow #2 anymore cause sounds like he always has a ****ty day (that's why he's dentist #2 haha).
 
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Things will change slowly. Even if midlevels catch on, it will be decades before enough can be trained to change the DDS landscape. Think about nurse practitioners and physician's assistants. It's taken 50 years of need and training for them to get to the point they're at today. And even then, they're not stealing business from doctors -- they're tools doctors use to expand their practice.

Of course dentists in small and solo formats have no need to hire dental therapists instead of hygienists and assistants. But group/corporate practices might have a use for them much farther down the road. There aren't a heck of a lot of group practices (especially not groups in the sense that all the dentists own a stake) right now, but they're slowly catching on. They're hampered by convention, referral politics, and the fact that dentists vary in pricing more than doctors. It will be interesting to see how things change.

Here's a recent medscape article on group dental practices -- worth the free sign-up.
 
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Dentist #2 sounds lazy to me. If it's saturated try goin somewhere that it's not saturated. Maybe he has no personality or no advertising.

You can be sucessful at anything you WANT to do. If I were u I would not ever go shadow #2 anymore cause sounds like he always has a ****ty day (that's why he's dentist #2 haha).

I've never understood when people say the former bolded part. In the real world, how can you just easily move from one place to another (i.e. one state to another)? It takes a lot of energy out of you to move not to mention if you had friends and people u knew in your area. You would basically have to start over socially/ life wise. Yes, it's easy to solve the problem by saying it, but doing It would be exhausting.
 
I definitely agree with the anti-social point above. "Dentist B" was not particularly talkative with his patients and mostly just spoke the bare minimum about the procedures, x-rays, etc.

Dentist A, however, joked around with his patients and had a really broad general knowledge to where he could talk about anything to just about anyone. I really admired Dentist A and I think his ability to talk about any topic and connect with his patients not only helped him do well but more importantly actually enjoy his career day-to-day.

I think I will wait for Dentist A to shadow again or find someone else.
 
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I've never understood when people say the former bolded part. In the real world, how can you just easily move from one place to another (i.e. one state to another)? It takes a lot of energy out of you to move not to mention if you had friends and people u knew in your area. You would basically have to start over socially/ life wise. Yes, it's easy to solve the problem by saying it, but doing It would be exhausting.

Depends on your situation and how far you're moving. It's easier being young and single -- get a job lined up and get a hotel while you check out craigslist rooms for rent.

I imagine you'll be making your most important geographic decisions in the few years after you graduate from dental school. After that, your family and your reputation is putting down roots. But you can still do it. And you really don't have to move far to change markets -- like going from suburban to rural.
 
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I've never understood when people say the former bolded part. In the real world, how can you just easily move from one place to another (i.e. one state to another)? It takes a lot of energy out of you to move not to mention if you had friends and people u knew in your area. You would basically have to start over socially/ life wise. Yes, it's easy to solve the problem by saying it, but doing It would be exhausting.


Lemme be more specific to the point I was trying to make.

If your dedicated to something, not just dentistry, you may have to sacrifice time, money, effort, etc. in order to be successful at it. Odds are, dent #2 isn't very happy because he doesn't try to be.

Also you don't have to move to another state in order to change the location where you practice. For example, the town I live in (conway, AR) has a smaller population than little rock, AR. Many people commute from Conway to little rock and vice versa for their jobs. If dentist #2 wanted to relocate to conway from little rock, it would be very easy as far as travelling goes. Yes he would have to join or open a practice, but travelling and relocating his house would not be a big issue.

Now fellowstudent92, do you know what you have to do your junior and senior year of dental school??? You have to find your own patients. That may require being social, which apparently is a lot of energy and work for you. And honestly you sound like dentist #2 to me. If you don't want something bad enough, you prolly won't get it, and then you prolly won't like it.

Would you like anymore cheese with that whine???
 
Lemme be more specific to the point I was trying to make.

If your dedicated to something, not just dentistry, you may have to sacrifice time, money, effort, etc. in order to be successful at it. Odds are, dent #2 isn't very happy because he doesn't try to be.

Also you don't have to move to another state in order to change the location where you practice. For example, the town I live in (conway, AR) has a smaller population than little rock, AR. Many people commute from Conway to little rock and vice versa for their jobs. If dentist #2 wanted to relocate to conway from little rock, it would be very easy as far as travelling goes. Yes he would have to join or open a practice, but travelling and relocating his house would not be a big issue.

Now fellowstudent92, do you know what you have to do your junior and senior year of dental school??? You have to find your own patients. That may require being social, which apparently is a lot of energy and work for you. And honestly you sound like dentist #2 to me. If you don't want something bad enough, you prolly won't get it, and then you prolly won't like it.

Would you like anymore cheese with that whine???

lol I'm not sure if you're attacking me based on this statement from what I said, but I don't see how you could arrive at this conclusion about me. I was simply questioning the feasibility of your suggestion to relocate. I wasn't doubting you because I didn't want this bad enough nor did I ever suggest that. In fact, I said relocating might not be possible because of other factors outside of dentistry may hinder you from doing so (i.e. family and friends) but that doesn't mean I don't want it as badly enough as you do.
 
I'm not attacking you, just clarifying based on what you said earlier. Apologize if I offended you, I was just playin about the cheese with whine statement haha.
 
I was told by an I-O psychologist one time that job satisfaction correlates strongly with something called neutral object satisfaction, and there's at least a little influence on this by genetics. There are plenty of other factors, but, intuitively, we know some people are just going to be grouchy about any situation they're in.

I've been meaning to look into this more deeply, but in the meantime, Wikipedia has a whole article on the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction
 
Second dentist seems bitter and quite ignorant.

There already is a miracle cure for cavities. It's called brushing and flossing your teeth, and maintaining a healthy low sugar diet. It is the best treatment plan for caries from every perspective, public health, financial, etc.

There will never be a vaccine for s.mutans et al because it is a pointless venture. There are 0 reasons to develop one, and the patient outcome would probably be the same as brushing.
 
Not likely to be a popular answer here, but I think there is a lot of value in shadowing the second dentist. To me, this is the entire point of shadowing. We have already decided on a career in dentistry, and thus we are all informed of the numerous strengths of the profession (job stability, working conditions & hours, potential for great income, business ownership, etc.). What is the point, then, of spending 100% of our shadowing hours with dentist #1?

Part of being an informed consumer and making sound decisions is looking at both sides of the issue. When dentist #2 says something that scares or concerns you, jot it down and see what dentist #1 has to say about it. Better yet, go find dentist #3 and #4 and spend some time with them. Don't go to Amazon and read every single 5-star review without looking at the average reviews or any of the 1-stars.

There are far too many pre-health students who are told "don't worry about the debt, you will have no trouble paying it off," and assume this must be true. But make no mistake, there are schools charging $110k+ per year, and the #'s say that 25% of practicing dentists are making <$100k per year. Even if your numbers aren't exact, do some back-of-the-envelope math with those numbers, and don't forget loan distribution fees, living expenses, compounding interest (both during school and during repayment), state & federal income taxes, SS, and medicare.
 
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Not likely to be a popular answer here, but I think there is a lot of value in shadowing the second dentist. To me, this is the entire point of shadowing. We have already decided on a career in dentistry, and thus we are all informed of the numerous strengths of the profession (job stability, working conditions & hours, potential for great income, business ownership, etc.). What is the point, then, of spending 100% of our shadowing hours with dentist #1?

Part of being an informed consumer and making sound decisions is looking at both sides of the issue. When dentist #2 says something that scares or concerns you, jot it down and see what dentist #1 has to say about it. Better yet, go find dentist #3 and #4 and spend some time with them. Don't go to Amazon and read every single 5-star review without looking at the average reviews or any of the 1-stars.

There are far too many pre-health students who are told "don't worry about the debt, you will have no trouble paying it off," and assume this must be true. But make no mistake, there are schools charging $110k+ per year, and the #'s say that 25% of practicing dentists are making <$100k per year. Even if your numbers aren't exact, do some back-of-the-envelope math with those numbers, and don't forget loan distribution fees, living expenses, compounding interest (both during school and during repayment), state & federal income taxes, SS, and medicare.

Hit the nail on the head here. Talk to dentist #1 about issues #2 has brought up. Maybe #1 can help you avoid making the same mistakes #2 did.
 
Listen up Mr. Costanza, the field of dentistry is not a dead end, it's constantly growing. Think of everyone who has dentures. What comes to mind? Elderly people. Name one young person that goes to see a dentist for dentures. I can't name a single one while shadowing my dentist for 2 months. Everybody is taking care of their teeth now and coming in for preventative care. More people taking care of their teeth, more patients, life is good. The first dentist clearly enjoys helping others and is happy to meet new people and long time patients because he has a 10+ year relationship with them. The other one is just those that wish they could have done something different in life and feel stuck so he gets angry. Or he's trying to stop you from entering the field so there's less competition in his area and doesn't want to start a dental turf war. But no matter where you go there will always be people who hate their jobs and more who love it. He is that 1 out of 10 dentists who doesn't recommend Crest toothpaste.
 
I read that the demand for dentists will increase by 40% by 2020. I think that leaves room for some saturation.
 
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