Is Dentistry usually considered more "chill" than medicine?

[jman128]

Whenever I think of medicine, I get a bad, stressful vibe from it. It seems like pre-med students are more intense and I guess you have to be to handle that many years, the hierarchy, and the hours.

Pre-dental students are still intense because its competitive but it seems that they are less crazy and obsessive. Dentistry to me seems like a more realistic career in terms of environment and hours.

Im sure I can be wrong but these are just the vibes I am getting.

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[interesting]

I'm a DS1...

Never went to med school but just from my own personal observation.

Biochemistry, Immunology, Physiology, Pathology, Histology, Pharmacology, Radiology

The classes are the real deal, I would say for pathology, histology, and radiology we obviously concentrate on the oral aspect instead of the rest of the body but we still learn the rest of the body. For radiology, I imagine we would be restricted to the head.

Dental anatomy...anatomy of teeth is complex as it is, not even including morphogenesis, development, genetic deformities, occlusion, etc.

Gross anatomy is one class I believe medical school separates itself. At least at our dental school, we don't pay too much attention to the lower half of the body. We just need to know that we have muscles there. They are not teaching clinically relevant information about the legs since we do not operate in that area. I would guarantee we are more comfortable with head & neck than a medical doctor who is not ENT, plastics, neuro.

Being a surgeon of the mouth is not particularly easy and to be great, requires great manual dexterity. We are talking about precision down to half a millimeter required when you have a patient lying in a chair. Not to mention, you will need to maintain correct posture to practice 20+ years.

Is it chill?
Yes and no. Our dental class avg gpa is ridiculously high. Our class has highest average entering GPA of our school's history at 3.6 GPA. Just as high as medical school. Naturally the students are brilliant and extremely smart. Expect to be shocked to say the least when you are sitting on top of that curve instead of two standard deviations to the right of it.

You make of dental school what you want however. If you want to get straight As and consistently set the curve. I guarantee those top students would have no problem in medical school and are stressing just as much as medical students. We spend so much time practicing our hand skills that it is impossible however for dental school to be more didactically demanding than medical school. If you want to specialize in dentistry, it seems as if unless one is naturally gifted with photographic memory, you will be working your butt off. If specializing is not your thing, dental school can be super chill, and I would argue that it does not matter if your graduate last in your class as long as your hand skills were up to par so you could prepare beautiful preps.

For myself, I still get 8 hours of sleep a night and good grades, however I have no doubt I will find myself on the lower end of a curve in no time.

 

[vaanhalen]

don't let anyone fool you, you asked a direct question and deserve a real answer. med is much more stressful than dental. I have family members in MD school, DMD school, MD general surgery residency and MD neurosurgery residency at mayo, and personal friends that are a practicing everything, from nuke medicine to OD to ortho, and bottom line is everyone is smart, everyone works hard, yadda yadda but the MDs are more stressed out, plain and simple, esp. in MD school. If u like medicine most, do medicine, stay away from D school. If you're scared of the stress, do a less stressful option, just pick a spot along the stress continuum from MD to DO to PA to RN to Podiatry.... they all get paid well enough to cover a family.

 

[newmexomfs]

I'm a DS1...

Never went to med school but just from my own personal observation.

Biochemistry, Immunology, Physiology, Pathology, Histology, Pharmacology, Radiology

The classes are the real deal, I would say for pathology, histology, and radiology we obviously concentrate on the oral aspect instead of the rest of the body but we still learn the rest of the body. For radiology, I imagine we would be restricted to the head.

Dental anatomy...anatomy of teeth is complex as it is, not even including morphogenesis, development, genetic deformities, occlusion, etc.

Gross anatomy is one class I believe medical school separates itself. At least at our dental school, we don't pay too much attention to the lower half of the body. We just need to know that we have muscles there. They are not teaching clinically relevant information about the legs since we do not operate in that area. I would guarantee we are more comfortable with head & neck than a medical doctor who is not ENT, plastics, neuro.

Being a surgeon of the mouth is not particularly easy and to be great, requires great manual dexterity. We are talking about precision down to half a millimeter required when you have a patient lying in a chair. Not to mention, you will need to maintain correct posture to practice 20+ years.

Is it chill?
Yes and no. Our dental class avg gpa is ridiculously high. Our class has highest average entering GPA of our school's history at 3.6 GPA. Just as high as medical school. Naturally the students are brilliant and extremely smart. Expect to be shocked to say the least when you are sitting on top of that curve instead of two standard deviations to the right of it.

You make of dental school what you want however. If you want to get straight As and consistently set the curve. I guarantee those top students would have no problem in medical school and are stressing just as much as medical students. We spend so much time practicing our hand skills that it is impossible however for dental school to be more didactically demanding than medical school. If you want to specialize in dentistry, it seems as if unless one is naturally gifted with photographic memory, you will be working your butt off. If specializing is not your thing, dental school can be super chill, and I would argue that it does not matter if your graduate last in your class as long as your hand skills were up to par so you could prepare beautiful preps.

For myself, I still get 8 hours of sleep a night and good grades, however I have no doubt I will find myself on the lower end of a curve in no time.

👍 The best answer ever! 🙂

 

[dentalWorks]

Whenever I think of medicine, I get a bad, stressful vibe from it. It seems like pre-med students are more intense and I guess you have to be to handle that many years, the hierarchy, and the hours.

Pre-dental students are still intense because its competitive but it seems that they are less crazy and obsessive. Dentistry to me seems like a more realistic career in terms of environment and hours.

Im sure I can be wrong but these are just the vibes I am getting.

well, both are hard as hell to get into. and from looks of things, both throw 20-30 credits per term at you lol, so theyr both pretty intense.

As far as career options go, when you compare medicine vs dentistry, are you comparing primary care vs general practitioner? If yes, I would (just my opinion of course) rather be a general practice dentist over primary care physician (internal med, family prac, OBGY, & pediat) any day of the week.....

if your comparing a medical specialty vs a dental specialty, thats a whole different world. Medicine has A LOT, i mean A LOT more specialty options than dentistry, which is why I really believe more people wanna be physicians than dentists, there is simply more options. and BOTH (dentistry or medicine) will require you to be a top-gunner in your school. Believe me when I tell you this, I have seen it first hand how hard you have to work to be a top student. My sister got her DDS back in 2000, she was ranked 3rd in her class, and had (if I remember) 97 on her Part 1. She didn't have much of a personal life, she spent most of her day locked up in her room studying. I used to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night (2-3 AM) to go to the bathroom, and the light under her door was still on (obviously she was still studying)..... Anyways she graduated, and never went into a specialty, when I asked her why she goes "are you nuts, I don't wanna go through more schooling" hahaha

 

[Just Peachy]

At my school, at least, the dental students are WAY more chill than the med students. I think it has to do with the fact that in dentistry, you have a lot of people who are happy to be GP so they're not fighting their way to the top, while in medicine basically everyone specializes and it's a constant struggle to be #1. One of the cardio faculty told a group of the dental students a few weeks ago that she wished she had gone into dentistry because we all looked so much more relaxed and happy than the med students.

 

[vaanhalen]

"in medicine basically everyone specializes and it's a constant struggle to be #1. One of the cardio faculty told a group of the dental students a few weeks ago that she wished she had gone into dentistry because we all looked so much more relaxed and happy than the med students."

for real. 1st years and second year MDs, you'd be surprised how many will quietly tell you they wish they hadn't chosen MD route. Honestly, IMO MDs deserve to have their pay doubled.

 

[AmpedUp]

"in medicine basically everyone specializes and it's a constant struggle to be #1. One of the cardio faculty told a group of the dental students a few weeks ago that she wished she had gone into dentistry because we all looked so much more relaxed and happy than the med students."

for real. 1st years and second year MDs, you'd be surprised how many will quietly tell you they wish they hadn't chosen MD route. Honestly, IMO MDs deserve to have their pay doubled.

And patient bills doubled, too? 😀 (just messing)

Those med students work their tails off (and the competition doesn't really end in med school as well). Respect to them.

At the end of the day, I think the most underpaid professionals are those with Ph.D.'s - my hat off to them; they work EXTREMELY hard to get it (more than MD's IMO).

 

[dentalWorks]

And patient bills doubled, too? 😀 (just messing)

Those med students work their tails off (and the competition doesn't really end in med school as well). Respect to them.

However...at the end of the day...I think the most underpaid professionals are those with Ph.D.'s - my hats off to them; they work EXTREMELY hard to get it (more than MD's IMO).

I don't think so.... an MD who finished those grueling 4 years of med school THEN has to do a residency anywhere from 3-5 years working 60-80 hours per week making, what averages out to 10-12 dollars an hour is a HELLISH lifestyle.... A marine recon sniper probably is the only person with a little harsher training 🙂

 

[AmpedUp]

I don't think so.... an MD who finished those grueling 4 years of med school THEN has to do a residency anywhere from 3-5 years working 60-80 hours per week making, what averages out to 10-12 dollars an hour is a HELLISH lifestyle.... A marine recon sniper probably is the only person with a little harsher training 🙂

Post-Doc for PhD grads are also quite "hellish" as described by my Biochem professor (who I did research with in undergrad). He said he put in about 50-70 hours of work per week - sometimes more, depending on deadlines and fixing "mistakes."

I'm not totally sure but do postdocs get a full salary?

In the end though, MD's are fairly compensated for their hard work. PhD (scientists in particular) workers have to constantly work and achieve success through their work - they are constantly trying to prove themselves. I don't know, that's just my opinion. I say...pick your poison lol. For me, I'm content with dentistry - it satisfies what I want from a career (and more).

 

[preDDSmarilyn]

how would you guys say dentistry to pharmacy?

and thank you all for the input about the general comparison between MD vs DDS.

 

[7 Iron]

Post-Doc for PhD grads are also quite "hellish" as described by my Biochem professor (who I did research with in undergrad). He said he put in about 50-70 hours of work per week - sometimes more, depending on deadlines and fixing "mistakes."

I'm not totally sure but do postdocs get a full salary?

I worked in a lab for a while after graduation and the PI had recently hired a post-doc. We did lots of biochem work, and he had to purify proteins which takes forever. Sometimes he stayed in the lab until 11 at night to finish a purification! So, yeah, PhD's have to work crazy hard too. And I'm pretty sure he didn't make that much more than about 30k a year. All for 5 years of grad school? Yuck.

 

[redchesus]

working in a lab with PhD students and post-docs helped me decide not to do a PhD. Before I started my pre-dent app process, my PI was always hinting that I should go to grad school, lol. Nuh uh, not for me man...