@New_Vegas what are your thoughts? Feel like you could really contribute here.
The thing about general dentists doing ortho, is that it's not as easy as most people on here think. When you are in a residency, you are completely lost for about the first year. And this is after reviewing multiple cases from start to end in your morning seminars. It's only after doing it full time for about about 1 to 1.5 years does it finally start to click, and this is after reviewing multiple cases from start to finish every day. General dentist can learn to cherry pick easy cases, but they will eventually get themselves in trouble with difficult cases they can't do. Some ortho residencies are garbage, and people leave those residencies being rather incompetent in ortho.
Luckily for me, I had a good residency, with exposure to very difficult cases, with experience doing surgery cases, MARPE cases, placing TADs, doing many impacted canine cases, using lasers for soft tissue exposures... etc. etc.
So there will always be a need for orthodontists.
However, this is the problem. The need for orthodontists is shrinking, as the supply of orthodontists is increasing at an alarming rate. New orthodontists aren't really needed, anywhere. People are having less kids. General dentists are doing a lot of the cases.
This creates a very bad situation for current and especially new orthodontists. It's challenging to find full time work across the board. Most of the time, it will require driving anywhere from 0-2 hours, and picking up multiple jobs. Good luck finding 5 days a week at one office. That's very rare.
When you work at one office for just a few days a month, or even one day a week, it's going to be an awful experience for you and for the patients. It's a bad deal for the orthodontist, because it's hard to get assistants that are actually competent and fast at doing the ortho work. Generally you are borrowing assistants that work full time elsewhere, generally not in ortho. So it's up to you, the orthodontist, to teach an ever revolving staff of assistants who never really get that competent at the job. It's frustrating and causes burn out. It's bad for the patients because you aren't around for emergencies, which are common. So good luck trying to build up an office that you are only there a few days a month.
Many orthodontists can't find full time work, so they just start their own offices. This is a nightmare in today's world. I'm a member of some orthodontic only groups where we talk about the state of the field. Those who start an office say they generally can't pay themselves after one year because it's so slow starting out. It seems they generally can't pay themselves after two years because it's still so slow. After about 5 years, they generally can pay themselves, but they may not be making as much money as they would like.
It's still possible to be successful as a private practice orthodontist. But you have to work very hard. If you are an owner, open about 30 hours per week, expect your workload to be at least 60 hours per week. You have to constantly be thinking about the next community event you are going to go to, your next marketing move, how you are going to outcompete that office right down the street that offers the exact same services you do.
People go into this field thinking it's going to be a "good lifestyle". I've read that on here multiple times. What lifestyle are they talking about? Having to drive around 2+ hours per day in different directions to find work? Spending 80+ hours per week on their own office? Being in debt for the rest of their life? What "lifestyle" are they talking about?
Disregard advice from people who entered this field 20+ years ago with 1/5 of the debt of current orthodontists, and when the field was less than half as saturated as it is now. They earned their money and became financially secure before the current nightmare situation for current orthodontists.
I'm one of those orthodontists who bought a small, and struggling orthodontic practice. I'm working on it over 80 hours per week, and am starting to see growth in the practice, but it comes at a high cost to your personal life. And I haven't been able to pay myself much in the last two years that I've been with the practice. I do see a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's going to come at the expense of just taking patients away from other orthodontists nearby. Sorry guys. Eventually, someone younger with more energy will come by and just start taking the ever shrinking pool of patients away from me. Or some corporation with deeper pockets to market..
