how to keep informed about dentistry?

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amya

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Hi there
I was just wondering how people have been keeping up with new developments in dentistry in general so you are well informed in case of an interview. What websites, journals etc? would be a good idea to start reading or staying in tune with?
 
"New developments" in dentistry are pretty meaningless at this stage of the game. Why not subscribe to a newspaper from China, Bazil, India, Indonesia?
 
"new developments are meaningless at this stage"- I seriously beg to differ.
 
"new developments are meaningless at this stage"- I seriously beg to differ.

They must be. Why else would you have to ask sdners on where to find the information? Kind of like having trouble navigating through college algebra but wanting to know the current topics in quantum mechanics.
 
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Hi there
I was just wondering how people have been keeping up with new developments in dentistry in general so you are well informed in case of an interview. What websites, journals etc? would be a good idea to start reading or staying in tune with?


If you really wanted to, you could purchase a subscription to JADA.
 
"New developments" in dentistry are pretty meaningless at this stage of the game. Why not subscribe to a newspaper from China, Bazil, India, Indonesia?

Because he/she is applying to dental school. Sure, we're not dentists and a lot of journals and news will be over our heads, but we're not completely ******ed I don't think it hurts for a pre-dent to at least try to follow the industry.

We're about to play the interview game and it's perfectly acceptable to start looking and preparing for potential questions. I know things along this line have come up in interviews. It's silly, but it's pretty easy to just get an email once a week so you're not caught with your pants down. Coming to his/her peers to ask what they've found helpful is what this place is for. That link provided seems helpful.
 
Because he/she is applying to dental school. Sure, we're not dentists and a lot of journals and news will be over our heads, but we're not completely ******ed I don't think it hurts for a pre-dent to at least try to follow the industry.

We're about to play the interview game and it's perfectly acceptable to start looking and preparing for potential questions. I know things along this line have come up in interviews. It's silly, but it's pretty easy to just get an email once a week so you're not caught with your pants down. Coming to his/her peers to ask what they've found helpful is what this place is for. That link provided seems helpful.

There is a world of difference between understanding the current problems affecting dentistry and new developments in dental equipment, technology.
 
There is a world of difference between understanding the current problems affecting dentistry and new developments in dental equipment, technology.

I suppose. Maybe I'm just a nerd and it's all interesting to me. I get a regular dump of magazines, journals, product catalogs, etc. from the first dentist I shadowed. I'm sort of a middle man before the recycle bin. Do I care about nano-dimer chemistry and low-shrinkage composite? No. And I know I don't need to care for the moment. So I flip to the next page. There's plenty of stuff we are capable of at least being aware of. I don't see this cool new stuff shadowing and volunteering. So it's nice to know just what it is a school is bragging to me about when they tell me.
 
well... reading up on dentistry "topics" from a pre-dental prospective should be mostly focused on issues / hot topics / debates / controversies / etc. For example, the middle-level providers debate? what about the safety of amalgam usage? Underserved locations, why they exist in the first place and what possible solutions are there to resolve this crisis? Sometime ago, I read an article about letting dentists providing AIDS testing (good or bad idea?). etc.

Don't waste too much time reading up on equipment and latest treatment options, that stuff doesn't (USUALLY) come up in interviews. But you should be knolwedagle with whats going on in dentistry in general (like the stuff I mentioned above)
 
I bought a subscription to JADA. It's decent for reading about the latest dental research, but since I'm not in dental school yet, alot of the terminology is over my head and I don't get a whole lot out of it. Plus it was like $73, so pretty expensive....an investment I wouldn't recommend.
 
Rather than trying to understand the super complex stuff...

Know, who what when why how each step of a filling works first but I think doc toothache is implying that he should start off even simpler. 🙂
 
I interviewed at Tufts, Columbia, and NYU, and my masters advisor gave me a mock interview consisting of the questions she asks the med students she interviews for UMDNJ. Not once was I asked a question pertaining to any technical details or current events in the field. I'm sure it does happen on occasion, but I think there are better ways to spend your time than trying to prepare for that chance occurrence. I do have a friend who was asked about how she would go about treating a patient with HIV, but even there I don't think reading current field literature would give you a much bigger edge over someone who just thought carefully about the question. Obviously just my opinion though.
 
No reason to purchase JADA - at any library, university, etc. it should be free. Print any interesting article. I keep a binder of interesting things I print off of there. They investigate social and scientific trends.
 
You readers will probably be happy once you're in school. After my first year i still don't bother keeping up with anything yet, but i get sent more stuff from the ada, asda, jada, vagd, whatever the politics one is, and probably a few others, than i could possibly hope to read.

there's basically no way you'd ever be asked stuff like this in an interview though.
 
No reason to purchase JADA - at any library, university, etc. it should be free. Print any interesting article. I keep a binder of interesting things I print off of there. They investigate social and scientific trends.

Yep. Its free if you use your university's account to access JADA.
 
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