Interview question why not medicine? and what are cons about dentistry?

[ddsshin]

I could not come up with good answers for this because that was one of my interview questions...
I said I don't want to be medical doctor because alot of cases are life and death situation and the interviewer said... dentistry can be emergent.. and I didn't know how to answer this question. Also.... I could not think about anything cons about dental career... I said tuition is expensive and the interviewer said talk about not school, but as a career....
Any good answers?????????????

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[bennijai]

At least your interview is over and done. Don't dwell on it too much, it will only eat you from the inside-out. I believe the only way to answer "why not medicine?" is based on your experience. What did you notice about shadowing that you liked that is lacking in the medical field?

One of the cons with dentistry today is that it is expensive.

 

[KirinJ]

At least your interview is over and done. Don't dwell on it too much, it will only eat you from the inside-out. I believe the only way to answer "why not medicine?" is based on your experience. What did you notice about shadowing that you liked that is lacking in the medical field?

One of the cons with dentistry today is that it is expensive.

It's also pretty short lived.

 

[Extirpator]

Life or death is what I would say... I honestly cannot think of a life or death dental issue and I've been working at a practice for 5 years... He was being ridiculous if he said otherwise... maybe 0.0000001% of cases are even remotely life or death

 

[lphiewok]

IMO life and death is kinda a weak answer similar to saying 'being too perfectionist is my weakness.' it's a very cliche type of answer where it doesn't really give your personality or character to the interviewer.
you can still do medicine and not be involved with life and death situations (e.g. certain specialty like dermatologist probably doesn't see many life/death situations just like dentists) whereas dentists can be in serious situations too.
of course why not medicine question must be based on your personal reason so there is no right/wrong answer but i think there are strong/weak answers..

when i was asked that question, i told them that working/shadowing both dentist and doctors (my mother is a nurse so had a chance to shadow some docs) i found that the lifestyle of dentistry is better suited for me. I like the idea of owning my own practice and setting the practice the way i want to run it instead of working for a hospital (although not all docs work at hospital, but dentistry is 90%+ private practice whereas medicine is not near that number). I mentioned that i worked for 2 different office in last 3 years and i mentioned the things i liked/disliked in both offices and how i am planning on using good ideas with my practice whereas i will try not to have what i disliked from my working experience in my practice.
I also like the fact that i can balance my professional life and personal/family time with dentistry whereas medicine requires more hours/wk plus other on-call cases and doesn't offer as much freedom.
another thing about dentistry i like over medicine is the fact that general dentist can practice wide scope of procedures. You are allowed to do every procedures as long as you are competent and also it offers lots of excitement and challenges because you can do different things everyday.
I prefer dentistry's patient/doctor interaction where they usually keep a very close relation (this is based on my experience with the dentist i worked for, who was 76 years old so he spent 30 mins talking/30 mins doing dental work) but i think you can say this to your advantage if you can use the example (i used the example that my dentist was seeing this guy's family for over 20 years, and now he treats his son and his grandson and it's like he's a part of someone's family not just a someone who's doing teeth work).

I can go on and on with this but the point i'm trying to make is that you need to find what fits with your situation. try practicing mock interview questions (this 'why not medicine' is fairly common question that you should practice along with why dentistry, etc.) and ask the person who is interviewing you about how it sounds and etc.

For cons of dentistry, although i was not asked this question and my answer might not fit 100% with the question, I would probably say that lack of public awareness of oral health's importance is one of problems that dentistry is facing. Also working as a private practice owner, you can be liable to bigger problems if your practice is not running well, whereas a doctor working for a hospital will not be required to have management/business skills as much.

just my .02

 

[lphiewok]

Life or death is what I would say... I honestly cannot think of a life or death dental issue and I've been working at a practice for 5 years... He was being ridiculous if he said otherwise... maybe 0.0000001% of cases are even remotely life or death

although dentistry is nowhere close to life/death as ER surgeon, dentistry can be pretty serious too.

if you have a patient who has high blood pressure, you need to watch what kind of anesthetics you are going to use on them so it doesn't cause your blood pressure to shoot up.
while i was assisting, we see lots of older patients with diabetes who are going through dialysis, for these kind of patients we need to avoid those dates when they are doing dialysis and you need to use anesthetics which can be broken down by your liver and not by your kidneys.
these are just few cases and although it's not near life/death, dentistry is not an easy field.
it still involves patients and their health and nowadays with everyone having so many health issues, you can be sued for lot of different things..

 

[Ryltar]

Life or death is what I would say... I honestly cannot think of a life or death dental issue and I've been working at a practice for 5 years... He was being ridiculous if he said otherwise... maybe 0.0000001% of cases are even remotely life or death

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/166483/12_yearold_dies_from_lack_of_dental.html

While job shadowing my dentist uncle, I saw one patient that had a tooth that abscessed into the neck with a tennis ball sized infection. This infection was indeed life threatening.

Although rare, most oral cancers have a very low survival rate, and especially those underneath the tongue. Oral cancer is more common than cervical cancer today.

 

[NAVY DDS 2010]

Life or death is what I would say... I honestly cannot think of a life or death dental issue and I've been working at a practice for 5 years... He was being ridiculous if he said otherwise... maybe 0.0000001% of cases are even remotely life or death

That is because you are pre-dent and not a dental student or dentist yet. What are the chances you will ever be faced with a SERIOUS event that is a true life or death situation in your dental office? Pretty low odds. But, there are many events that can occur that are true life or death potentially.

- a patient of yours can develop a dental infection that can get severe enough to become Ludwig's Angina. In some cases, the patient MUST be intubated. If not, their airway will shut. The severe cases must be treated in the OR.

- anestetic overdoses especially when given sedatives in addition to anesthetic

- anaphylactic reaction to various things

- death from asphyxiation of crowns, bridges, etc that a patient aspirated during the dental procedure

- patients having cardiac events

I could go on, but you should get my point. There is a chance that you will face having to make life or death decisions at some time in your career. Chances are low, but they do exists. People die every year diretly due to dental related issues or the dental care they received. If they didn't exist, we wouldn't take a course called Emergeny Procedures in dental school learning how to handle emergency medical procedures to even include how we would do a cricothyrotomy if ever faced with the need to do one in an emergent situation.

 

[NAVY DDS 2010]

for some reason it double posted

 

[Extirpator]

true, but still, I was getting at how physicians deal with that regularly and for dentist's, it's the exception.

...like how I've been working at the same general dentist 5 years and have never encountered such a situation.

 

[Extirpator]

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/166483/12_yearold_dies_from_lack_of_dental.html

While job shadowing my dentist uncle, I saw one patient that had a tooth that abscessed into the neck with a tennis ball sized infection. This infection was indeed life threatening.

Although rare, most oral cancers have a very low survival rate, and especially those underneath the tongue. Oral cancer is more common than cervical cancer today.

Disregarding cancer... the other 2 situations were only life-threatening because they progressed past the point of dental care... hence my point.

Dental care is largely preventative and medical care, while having its preventative aspect, has a huge focus on life-threatening conditions.

 

[Ryltar]

Disregarding cancer... the other 2 situations were only life-threatening because they progressed past the point of dental care... hence my point.

Dental care is largely preventative and medical care, while having its preventative aspect, has a huge focus on life-threatening conditions.

I suppose it would depend on where you practice. If you're practicing in a rural area or a large city (especially those with large slums), chances are you are going to see some people with situations that have progressed past the point of preventative dental care. I think you would encounter fewer of such cases in the suburbs. Also, with the economy the way it is nowadays, people are making fewer or no dental cleaning visits.

 

[NAVY DDS 2010]

true, but still, I was getting at how physicians deal with that regularly and for dentist's, it's the exception.

...like how I've been working at the same general dentist 5 years and have never encountered such a situation.

I was responding to your response of you cannot think of life or death dental situations. There are many situations that have the potential of being life or death. Just because physicians have to deal with it more on a day to day basis doesn't mean a dentist can be any less prepared for emergencies! A dental emergency can happen at any time, so you must be prepared at all times.

plus, where you work makes a BIG difference on the exposure to dental emergencies. Urgent care clinics are going to be exposed to a lot greter risks.