MsPurtell said:
....for those of you who have hit this stage of your education and beyond, can you tell me how fast I should be in clinic at this point? I'm looking at fourth year and residency as a period in which I actually am transformed into a dentist that can get out there and earn a living with my skills. Obviously, I need to get quicker at what I'm doing and learn all the latest techniques out there. It's so hard to gauge just where I stand at this point though, because clinic is an artificial representation of real practice. THere are quicker techniques out there for some procedures than what we do in clinic, in practice we won't have to stop and wait for faculty to check our work, most of us will never use a rubber dam on the outside, and so on.
So, if I do 2 rests in an average clinic period, am I where I should be for a third - fourth year? I can do an anterior rct in one session, molars take me three sessions. Crown impressions take MULTIPLE attempts. One quad of sc/rp can take me two hours!
Am I on target guys? Thanks for honesty!
Listen fellow UConn person
😀.......I learned much more 4th year than 3rd year. The difference between how I felt about my skills was drastically different at the end of 4th year vs. 3rd year.
You will do much more work 4th year - you should already be seeing the difference now that we have left. That said, it wasn't until around new years that I would go to clinic with a measurable amount of confidence on a daily basis.
My advice is to not worry too much about speed at this point. I never really tried to consciously increase my speed - instead I focused on doing quality work and after a month I would realize, "wow, this MOD was much bigger than the one I did last month and it took me half the time".
I truly believe you should still focus on quality of work. Also, you're correct. It is almost impossible to be "fast" at UConn because too many attendings have the attitude of, "well, this FPD final impression is good, but I won't tell you that because it's 9:45am and you still have 2:15 of the patient's time to waste. So......do another".
Towards the end it became much clearer when this was happening - translation - based on experience I knew the final impression was good and I didn't need the attending to tell me.
Towards the end you will also have MUCH MORE INPUT. Attending says, "hmm I don't know about that distal margin?" You say, "yea, I think it looks good." Attending says, "o.k., go for it". You then go to Frank in the lab and he says. "final impressions don't get any better than this.....who was wasting your time making you take this over?" You realize that in privvate practice this final impression would've taken 20 mins.
Community health is also very good. With only minor checks (basically CR/CAV and final) I was easily able to do 1 OPR procedure per hour without rushing. It was amazing to realize how much time you waste waiting for attendings and how much time an experienced assistant can shave off the procedure.
At this stage, when you have Dr. New$%^er precepting you (basically if you get stuck with him 
