Maybe don’t pick the one that finishes training at age ~32, requires sleeping in the hospital, has you deal with hospital politics, requires you to hold a screaming pager, and will involve life and death emergencies at any moment. Does that sound cushy to you?
In terms of post training, private practice.
You won’t make it through post-training if you’re looking for comfort. Financially speaking, investing in OMS just to retire early is a terrible decision. Same could be said for Orthodontics. If you want to get out of the game early, pick the path with the shortest training.!
Not in anything JUST for the money or early retirement, but dental students cannot gloss over the fact that OMFS are clearing over a million dollars a year. Students can't ignore this. GPs may have a head start, but a surgeon has personally told me that OMFS "wins every time." You would catch up in earning potential super quick. But heck what do I know. Not much honestly
Sounds like you've made your decision.
That's what sounds sweet about ortho. Longevity. Surgeons physically work hard.
But the hardcore sdn avatar makes it all worth it
Sounds fun, and easy
Definitely - ortho residency and any residency for that matter is no easy feat that's for sure.
Sounds pretty biased.
Can General compete with the amount thirds ripped and implants slammed by OMS?
No. But they can compete with the amount produced. After 4-6 years you can have enough financial and skill leverage to do a lot.
Disclaimer; just looking for some clarification on this since I never understood it-- please, anybody, feel free to pitch in!!
We scan every patient for records, but any lab work that needs to be done (hawleys, essix, nance, TPA, etc etc) requires a separate alginate impression, pour up, and fabrication on our own. We only send out stuff that can't be done on our own (like a Herbst)
That’s because an ortho can see 60-100 patients per day and each patient pays him/her $120-200 per office visit. Just do a simple multiplication calculation; you can figure out how much an ortho can produce per day. Since there are not enough ortho patients to put 60-100 of them in one day, 4-5 days a week) at one office location, most orthodontists have to open more than one office or have to travel to work part time for the corp offices (or GP offices) in order to fill their week schedule. All specialists, including the OS’s, have to travel if they want to have full time work schedule and make a lot of money. To get 21 work days/month, I have to travel to work at 6 different offices (4 of them are mine and the other 2 are corp offices).
You are attending a good program. I didn't think such program still exists. Those lab skills will come in handy when you start your own office or when work at corp offices that still use alginate impression material.
No, but if that is your rationale for OS I would not recommend you take that path.
It's good to be able to fabricate these appliances, but hopefully you only need to do a bare minimum. It's a waste of valuable time. A 2 yr program (can't believe they still exist) is not alot of time. You have more important areas to spend your time on. In the real world .... most if not all of your appliances will be sent out to a lab. Yes. Some appliances (Essix rets) are still made in house. If you have extra time at your private office .... spend that time networking and developing referrals. That is more important than making a retainer.
This is the area that I had no idea about when I specialized. The always tenuous referral relationship with GPs. The whole process of "begging" for referrals. This process is easy when you are young and full of energy. If you are a people person. Out going. I remember my routine of meeting a few new dentists every week for lunch. What a hassle. My success rate of then receiving referrals was pretty low. As a specialist ... not only are you going to have to kiss a**, but you will need to treat that GP's referral patients like they were VIPs. One bad situation with a GP's patient ,,,, means you need to call that GP and explain the situation. If not. Potentially lose that referral source. So exhausting. This is the ONLY bad part of specializing imo.
ya that's basically all ortho residency is, you just trim models and trace cephs and make powerpoints. nothing to it!
Especially since the peds residents will see the patient with the poky ortho wire who's been waiting in the emergency department for the last 5 hours. Nothing like waking up at 1:00 AM to go clip an ortho wire!
Compared to an Oral Surgery residency, yes. I mean you can make it through ortho residency and get your certificate without giving an injection. One ortho resident brought me an injection syringe when asked to anesthetize a site and reported it was broken. Well of course it is not going to work if you placed the anesthetic cartridge in the wrong direction by 180 degrees.
That is extremely sad. If you cannot place a LA cartridge in correctly that is very alarming. They probably went to a dental school that was very weak clinically-usually the Ivies.
OMS you could buy a private island easier though
It helps when you first start your office and it is super slow. Spending time to make the ortho appliances should help keep you busy and relieve the stress of having to sit around doing nothing due to lack of patients. Sure, you can spend the free time to do marketing and to meet the referral GPs….but this only takes a couple of hours a day and a few days a month to do…and there are 365 days in a year. As your office gets busier, you can use your lab knowledge to train one your assistants to make appliances for you so you can focus more on patient treatments.
Very true! As a specialist, you need referrals from the GPs. If you are not willing to go around meeting the referrals GPs, you shouldn’t specialize. It’s also true that when you are young, you have more energy and time to do whatever it takes to make the referring GPs happy. My wife used to visit the GP offices very often when she was in her early 30s. She taught the GPs how to take impressions and restore implants. She helped the GPs to deliver and adjust the stayplate after the immediate extractions and implant placements etc. As soon as she stopped marketing, the practice has lost a lot of patients. It used to be opened 3 days a week. Now, it only has enough patients to stay opened 4 days a month. Her office manager now becomes my full time office manager🙂. That's ok because my wife needed more time to take care of our kids and my ortho offices have gotten busier. One good thing about ortho is you can market your practice directly to the public. And your ortho patients also refer their friends and relatives to your office. OS, endo, perio all have to rely on the GPs for getting new patients.
Dental anesthesiology is a tiny specialty, and is inconsequential with regards to provision of deep sedation and general anesthesia. There are about 20-30 DAs coming out of training every year, and 230 OMFS coming out every year (with 10,000 active oral surgeons roughly).
lol where are you getting this information my friend
By banging out 800k-1mil a year of income and investing. Some islands aren't that horribly expensive
One has an unhealthy phobia of blood, the other a profound lust for it.
