Manual Dexterity

[Soma13]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey guys-

Has anyone ever heard of a person who couldn't complete dental school because of a lack of manual dexterity.

Also could not having the best hands bring down your dental school GPA alot and hurt your chances of specializing or are most clinical classes graded pass/fail.

Are there any dental specialities that require a great deal of manual dexterity.

Does practicing really help that much or is it an innate gift.

-thanks

 

[Jone]

i've talked to students from several different schools who told me "man, i've graduated with a heck of a lot of colleagues who i personally would NEVER take my kids to for dental treatment -- they don't know what the heck they are doing with their hands."

so i guess you can still manage to graduate.... but GPA may be another issue....

 

[Soma13]

anyone else??????

 

[w3chen99]

Schools don't expect every student that they accept to have agile fingers and exceptional manual dexterity. The fact is, in order to perform proper dental procedures, you need to PRACTICE to get better. Of course some students get better a lot faster than others, but everyone usually ends up on the same page in the end (in order to pass of course). In order to specialize, you don't have to have the BEST hands, but obviously the combination of your hand skills and intelligence separates you from the rest of the class(and hopefully the other applicants across the nation).

If you are talking about a complete lack of manual dexterity where your fingers have problems responding to what your brain is telling it to do, perhaps dentistry might not be the field for you. Manual dexterity is not that important (there are always ways to perform procedures so that you limit mistakes due to your deficiencies), but it is necessary to have.