Not worth the time. "REAL" dentistry is nothing like they teach us in dental school. The 5 minute prep it takes the dentist you are shadowing to do, will take you a good 2 hours the first time you do it in bench lab... The first day with our handpieces, we had to do simple shapes: a plus sign, three parallel 3mm lines, a triangle, a hollow triangle, a square, etc on an ivorine block. Basically, the hardest thing EVER. . . after 1 semester, what took over 3 hours to do, will take no time at all. Plus, in lab, we are doing 'ideal' preps whereas dentists are designing their preps around where the caries are. And, the dentists will use materials that have different bonding agents, bases, wall taper requirements, etc etc etc that will differ from dental school. NOTHING you learn shadowing will be applicable to your dental school career except 2 things: 1) instrument names (this will keep you ahead of the class until the first tooth morphology test 2 weeks in where you have to memorize them all anyway) and 2)good dr-pt skills/chairside manner. eh, I guess +3) Any business skills or practice management techniques you can take away -- Like having fresh baked cookies in the waiting room to calm the pts and remind them of a homey feeling.
*(as an aside, my wife was reading over my shoulder and I typed 'homely,' which, according to her, has a way different meaning than 'homey.' Who knew! Learning everyday 😀)
