Do you have to open up a practice or partnership?

[DrArsenic]

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Besides opening your own practice or a partnership are there a lot of jobs available if you just want to work under a regular salary? Do hospitals or clinics hire dentists? And is there a high demand for dentists?

Thanks for any comments.

 

[Yah-E]

You can do Public Health, research, and/or teach. I haven't heard of any general dentists hired by hospitals, but Pediatric dentists and Oral Surgeons are often affliated with hospitals.

There are "chain" dental corporations that you can be hired by or to work for, but you're eliminating yourself out one of the fruits in our profession and that is being your own boss!

Private practice is where all the $$ is. If you just want to treat patients, careless about how much you make, and don't want to deal with the business aspect of dentistry, then yeah, the "chain/franchised" dentistry will be perfect for you.

Demands for dentists are always there.

 

[NewNameForGoogleBot]

Sure, you could work for another dentist as an associate, and there are some hospital jobs available. There are certainly plenty of associateships available and most will pay you a percentage of your production/collections. However, the big bucks are in owning your own practice.

 

[UBTom]

Some newly-graduated dentists can indeed open their own practice right away, but that is a difficult thing to do (financing and attracting patients) so it is rare.

The majority of dentists right after graduation usually go work in an associateship as Jaap mentioned. This means working for a practice to get a salary, which can range from $70K to over $100K/yr. If you like the practice you are working at, sometimes they give you the opportunity to "buy in" and become a partner.

As far as hospital-based dentistry is concerned.....

Yep, you can indeed work in a hospital as a general dentist in two capacities:

1) A resident. This is if you go for a general practice residency after you graduate dental school.

2) As an attending dentist. Attendings usually have some sort of PG program under their belt though.

My sister is currently an attending at New York City's Bellevue Hospital and NYU's AEGD program. She does that one day a week. The rest of the week she devotes to the group practice she works at as an associate.

It's good to be an attending on the side... You get to observe, work on or teach residents about interesting cases that you might not see in private practice, and you interact with many other well-trained folks in other biomedical/dental disciplines.

Other hospital jobs: Veterans Administration hospitals usually have a big demand for prosthodontic specialists and general dentists who are skilled in prosthodontics. Lots of hospitals also have dentists on-staff for oral medicine (mainly deals with diagnosis and pathology).

You do get paid working as an attending or a resident, but not as much as private practice. But just one day out of a week as an attending is definitely worth it for the reasons above.

HTH!

 

[Yah-E]

Tom, your two options are education related and not job/career related. You can't be in GPR or being an attending as a career. We're talking about a hospital hiring you, a general dentist, like a physician full-time. Is there a general dentist hired and work for the hospitals full-time? I haven't heard of any. We're not talking about residencies or post graduate educations here.

 

[UBTom]

Heya Andy,

These two options are indeed education-related, but education and career does NOT have to be mutually exclusive! Being an attending is a part-time thing, BUT it CAN be career-related, i.e. it's a great thing to do to supplement your career as a private dentist.

If you want to do it as a full-time career hospital dentist, then you will have to become faculty of the institution and take on teaching positions such as the program director of a General Practice Residency program or such. You will have to be at the leading edge of the profession though that's for sure.

VA Hospitals do indeed hire general dentists to do general dentistry and not (just) for teaching purposes. Those who do should expect to do A LOT of removable prosthodontics though! 😀 Most VA-employed general dentists prefer to work only part time rather than full-time because the full-time pay isn't quite as good as private practice, but yeah you can make a full-time job of it if you can't find any associateships to your liking (i.e. better than nothing).

Also, general dentists are needed as well at institutions that care for special-needs patients (i.e. mentally ******ed, patients with psychological disorders, etc). There are dentists who are altruistic enough to work for those institutions full-time and take the pay hit.. However, I suspect most dentists wouldn't touch that with a 10-ft. pole. 😛

 

[DrRob]

Don't forget government related jobs such as being a dentist on Native reserves and for prisoners. The prisoner thing - is pretty good - basic denitistry for good pay!

 

[Hot-n-Aml]

Hey Dr. Rob,

I'm just curious, are the government dentist jobs you mentioned an American thing or is it also available in Canada??

Thanks
Hot-n-Aml
_____________________________________________
UPitt, SDM, Class of 2007

 

[DrRob]

I'm not sure about canada, but when I was working in wisconisin I would frequently get flyers to come and work for the prison starting at 120k/a. Marquette also had a rotation on a first nations reserve - I don't know what the dentist was making but I do know they are well taken care of and seem to retire at an early age.