Hi. I will be attending NYU, and I have a question. I know it's too early to start thinking about becoming specialist, but I'm interested in becoming one, especially endodontist. And what bothers me is that some people on SDN think NYUCD is not a good school. Do you think NYU graduated specialist will be discriminated when general dentists refer patients out because of the bad comments some people post on SDN? It kinda bothers me... Thanks.
NYU graduated specialist
- Thread starter cleorkwk
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2000
- Messages
- 2,942
- Reaction score
- 664
There are plenty of "great" not just specialists but GP's too from ANY dental school, just like there are plenty of "crappy" specialists and GP's from ANY dental school, so don't get hung up on the NYU thing.
Secondly, as a GP, what I'm looking for when i'm making a specialist referral, and I don't think that i'm that different from most GP's out there in my line of thought, is #1 is that specialist going to do a consistantly excellent job at treating the case that i'm sending his/her way and #2 are my patient's, when they return from that specialist, generally quite happy with how they were treated (I leave cost out of the equation since just about every patient thinks that every dentist, specialist or GP, charges too much 😉 ).
If as a specialist you meet criteria #1 and #2, it's all good in my book. If consistantly my criteria isn't being met, then reguardless of where that specialist received their training, i'm more than likely going to consider picking up a different specialists referral slip when I have a patient that i'm going to refer out. If one graduates from an accredited specialty program, then they're going to have a certain skill set for sure. Will some specialists choose to be a bit more "cutting edge" whereas other choose to be a bit more "classical" in their treatment methodologies? Sure, same goes for GP's too. And that's fine and just a fact of dentistry.
As for your want to go into endo. Many endo residencies actually prefer that a resident has had atleast a year of say a GPR/AEGD or some private general practice prior to starting their endo residency. Reason being is that there are many endo cases where the proper diagnosis isn't just a "black and white" issue, but one that is arrived at after working through many "shades of gray". And having had the opportunity to see more cases that a GPR or AEGD or private practice provides vs. the relatively limited subset of cases that a dental student experiences is often a very good thing
Thank you very much!
