I walked into a dentist's office in town last week and told him what I wanted to do. He actually looked excited to have me follow him around for a while. I told him I wanted to get in about 50 to 100 hours, and he said I was welcome to watch him the entire time.
At first, I thought maybe I'd be better off watching two or three so I could see more procedures, etc. But, this guy is amazing. He doesn't refer anything out. During the last 20 hours I've seen, fillings, root canals, extractions, implants (I actually got to help on these), dentures, bridges, crowns, skin grafts, bone grafts, wisdom teeth extractions, partials, a cancer diagnosis, braces, retainers and tons of other things. I said to him, I thought you had to specialize to much of what you do. He said, "Dentists do as much as they feel comfortable doing. Many of them don't want the stress of doing root canals or extracting wisdom teeth, so they refer them out. But I love dentistry, so I try to do as much as I can."
Needless to say, the guy is extremely busy. He doesn't work any short days, and he never takes a lunch. I asked him about burn-out, and he said he'd slow down when he thought he was doing too much. But as for now, he just closed on some land to build a new bigger office with 12 operatories (he currently has only 6). They guy is rolling in money, and he is extremely happy.
I'll probably spend the rest of my shadowing experience here, but I may visit one or two more dentisits just to get a feel how other dentists choose to run their practice, because from what I can tell the dentist I'm shawdowing does a lot more than the average guy. In fact, I like it so much, that I'm going to try and model my practice in a similar way. So much for specialty school, I'd be happier doing a little bit of everything like this guy does.
