Pedodontist

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:) Hey guys..., Right now im finishing up college, and plannin to apply to Dental School. I absoulutely LOVE helping little children.., and what is a better way to help them than by keeping their teeth (and mouth in general) healthy. The first thing alot of people notice about people is there smile, and i think a healthy smile does a lot for kids confidence in different areas.

So more on topic...., I've never actually heard the term Pedodontist and thanks to google I related it to a term i had heard : Pediatric Dentist.

Now..., Around here (in rural area of NC) We have a few GP Dentist..., and I can't say I have ever actually seen a Pediatric Dentist (although my mom says she took me to one when i was a little child).

I was just wondering where do the most often work?

Is their time off? Or will I never get vacation?

What is the usual age of children you see? Or do you see them from birth on up to college age?


Anything else you want to add? It's definetely welcome...

P.S. I've read that its hard to get into pedo "residency (for lack of a better term)".... So i realize that being a GP dentist seeing a lot of kids is also a good way to reach out to children. And since we're talking about GP Dentist..., Do they have to do a "Residency" or come right out of dental school and go to the work force.



Thanks in advance :)
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Pediatric dentists work all over the country. It's a 2-year specialty (residency). General dentists can work right out of dental school (although some states require a 1-year residency for licensure).

You'll get vacation as a pediatric dentist whenever you choose, although it usually will not coincide with usual vacation times. In other words, 3-day weekends are great days for pediatric dentists to see patients because they are out of school.

I see patients beginning at 1 year of age (I'll see them earlier if the parents bring them!) and see them up to the age of 18 (that's a residency policy, I'm no sure what I'll do when I graduate).
 
Alright.., Awesome man.. When I was asking where they work I meant like Hospitals? Or private practice? or Both?
 
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MarketDoc said:
Alright.., Awesome man.. When I was asking where they work I meant like Hospitals? Or private practice? or Both?
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My fault. They work in private practice typically, and many have hospital access in order to treat patients in the OR under GA. It would be extremely rare for one to be on staff at a major hospital and not have a private practice or be in academics.
 
Ahh Cool man thanks :) One last thing for you. Would the pediatric dentist work on a team w/ a team of pediatric dentist or alone?

Would a Pediatric dentist work with patients well beyone the usual "pediatric" years? (like the Mental ******ation patients? or would they get sent elsewhere?)
 
MarketDoc said:
Ahh Cool man thanks :) One last thing for you. Would the pediatric dentist work on a team w/ a team of pediatric dentist or alone?

Would a Pediatric dentist work with patients well beyone the usual "pediatric" years? (like the Mental ******ation patients? or would they get sent elsewhere?)
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You can work with a team of pediatric dentists (a group practice), or be on your own, or work with other dental specialtists.

Many pediatric dentists see special needs patients, it is certainly a component of residency programs. The methods used when treating children can be similar to the methods used to treat special needs patients.

Of course,that doesn't mean you will have to treat them in your practice, but the pediatric dentist is as well trained as anybody in treating them.
 
MarketDoc said:
:) Hey guys..., Right now im finishing up college, and plannin to apply to Dental School. I absoulutely LOVE helping little children.., and what is a better way to help them than by keeping their teeth (and mouth in general) healthy. The first thing alot of people notice about people is there smile, and i think a healthy smile does a lot for kids confidence in different areas.

So more on topic...., I've never actually heard the term Pedodontist and thanks to google I related it to a term i had heard : Pediatric Dentist.

Now..., Around here (in rural area of NC) We have a few GP Dentist..., and I can't say I have ever actually seen a Pediatric Dentist (although my mom says she took me to one when i was a little child).

I was just wondering where do the most often work?

Is their time off? Or will I never get vacation?

What is the usual age of children you see? Or do you see them from birth on up to college age?


Anything else you want to add? It's definetely welcome...

P.S. I've read that its hard to get into pedo "residency (for lack of a better term)".... So i realize that being a GP dentist seeing a lot of kids is also a good way to reach out to children. And since we're talking about GP Dentist..., Do they have to do a "Residency" or come right out of dental school and go to the work force.



Thanks in advance :)
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I share a lot of your same sentiments. Moreso, I am also interested in pediatric dentistry b/c I believe if children start at an early age to realize the importance of their dental health then many procedures later in life would not be needed. Those patients would gain an appreciation for dentist and convey the importance of dental health to the next generation. Prevention is better than cure
 
There is one school that take you 3 yrs to do pedo residency: UCSF.
You have to do a master program plus learning lots of ortho.

I admire pedodontists. One thing certainly I cannot do. I put kid on papoose once and was very traumatized by it after. Don't think I can do it every day.
 
Make sure you get some shadow time with a REAL pediatric dentist. Not some hot shot, soccer mom, 3 xboxes in the waiting room and foot masssagers for the mom's guy. Get to see the real stuff like the server mentally and physically impaired patients and the behavioral management cases to get a real feel. Peds are great, but in all honesty a GP should be able to treat most children and a pediatric dentist should be reserved for these special needs patients. Most of your referrals are the people that others DON'T want to see...well that and like I was saying those soccer moms who think that little Jimmy requires a pediatric "specialist" and therefore is willing to pay twice as much for the same treatment. The competition for residencies has really sparked up recently, I have no clue why. It takes a special person to really do it well. You are going to see some really terrible things in school and in practice involving the dental care of children (well overall health care, parenting, etc). The reality of the Medicaid system in states is disheartening. Kids have the service, the service sucks, and private practitioners won't waste their time working for free when they are paying off that new 38' Fountain. I don't think that I'm a super sensitive person by any means, but being in the pedo clinic has gotten to me a few times. My second experience treating a pediatric patient in school had me on the verge of a yelling match with the parent in the waiting room...yeah, it was so bad I ended up scolding the parent in front of 20 other people. I completely lost it with this lady...not my greatest moment in dentistry. It's not the child's fault, its the neglectful and ignorant parents. That's what makes it so hard to swallow.

Good luck, I don't mean to discourage anyone, but just hope you get a proper outlook before perusing a career that involves so much.

Heads up "pedodontist" is an archaic term, they use pediatric dentist now
 
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brownstain said:
but in all honesty a GP should be able to treat most children and a pediatric dentist should be reserved for these special needs patients.
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I *can* treat young children just fine, but frankly, I don't *want* to. Life's too short and it's not worth the blood pressure. Besides, Gavin needs to eat too. :D
 
ItsGavinC said:
:rolleyes: Your comment must be based on the vast experience you've had with treating children?
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Then can you tell us what kind of patients come to a pediatric dentist (if not the one's previously described)?
 
They just don't seem like problem kids when they are working with gavin, he makes em all perfect little angels. I'm not really being sarcastic, they told me of your mad kid skills when I interviewed at AZ a few years back.
 
Brownstain said:
Make sure you get some shadow time with a REAL pediatric dentist.
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I totally agree.

I'm about to start my D1 year and I want to specialize in pedo, but I worked for a year in a pedo clinic and definately saw it all. Part of my job was holding the hands of the children while they had treatment done, aka holding their hands down so that they could not grab the dentist while he worked on them. There were definately a lot of kickers and screamers and we did use the papoose board on some of the out of control ones. I have definately been kicked in the stomach and knocked back across the room before. My point being you should make sure and spend at least a week shadowing a pediatric dentist. Make sure that you can deal with the environment, which can tend to be a little more stressful than a general practitioner's office. I could see how it might be hard to go home to your own children at night. Not saying it was awful or anything. I loved it obviously.
 
ItsGavinC said:
Not quite true. There are *some* that have 3-year programs, but I wouldn't classify that as "lots". By far and away most programs are 2 years.
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Am I correct in assuming that the scope of practice between the two is identical?

If so, is the third "research" year designed to help prep for a career in academics?
 
Yellow Snow said:
They just don't seem like problem kids when they are working with gavin, he makes em all perfect little angels. I'm not really being sarcastic, they told me of your mad kid skills when I interviewed at AZ a few years back.
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Really?? whenever I went to ASDA meetings, the Arizona delegation would always tell me that Gavin was a big loser in dental school......oh well, he's a fellow pediatric dentist now, so I guess i gotta show him some sorta love....
 
sarah_bellum said:
Am I correct in assuming that the scope of practice between the two is identical?

If so, is the third "research" year designed to help prep for a career in academics?
Click to expand...

It can be academics......but it can also be public health.......or healthcare administration........or health policy........up to ur career interests
 
Hey, just wanted to say that pediatric dentistry is absolutely fascinating to me. Maybe not to the point of specializing in it, but working with kids is just a really "interesting" experience. I am just about to start D1 at Loma Linda, but I have been a DA at a pedo office for a year. My insight:

1. We work 4 days a week, but the guy I work for busts his ass when he is there! Talk about multitasking. It can be very busy, two ops seated and 4 fidgeting kids waiting to get an exam. We also do IV cases in-house with a dental anesthesiologist on some Fridays.
2. We see a good number of special needs patients but the majority are "normal" patients who would be hell for a GP who may not have the patience or the sensitive staff to deal with them. My boss and our staff have very thick skin and can handle screaming kids. I mean, if they are screaming, their mouth is open, right? We use that our advantage the best we can.
3. Papoosing is the last option, but it happens, mostly because parents are crazy and don't even want their kids sniffing some laughing gas. But we do it if they want it.
4. It can be especially lucrative. Depending what area you are in, parents bring their kids to you just because they have money and they think they are doing the best for their kids, even though many of them would do fine at a GP by age 10 or so.
5. Impressions and x-rays are the hardest for the kids. Expect vomit. Have Mr. Thirsty (suction) ready or else. But then again, you have RDAs do all that.
6. Maybe more so than other types of dentistry, finding good staff can be very difficult. They have to be gentle with kids, but also quick to restrict them if they start grabbing for the high speed or the syringe. Turnover in my office has been high in just the year I have been there.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Good luck in your endeavors!
 
Brownstain said:
Make sure you get some shadow time with a REAL pediatric dentist. Not some hot shot, soccer mom, 3 xboxes in the waiting room and foot masssagers for the mom's guy. Get to see the real stuff like the server mentally and physically impaired patients and the behavioral management cases to get a real feel. Peds are great, but in all honesty a GP should be able to treat most children and a pediatric dentist should be reserved for these special needs patients. Most of your referrals are the people that others DON'T want to see...well that and like I was saying those soccer moms who think that little Jimmy requires a pediatric "specialist" and therefore is willing to pay twice as much for the same treatment. The competition for residencies has really sparked up recently, I have no clue why. It takes a special person to really do it well. You are going to see some really terrible things in school and in practice involving the dental care of children (well overall health care, parenting, etc). The reality of the Medicaid system in states is disheartening. Kids have the service, the service sucks, and private practitioners won't waste their time working for free when they are paying off that new 38' Fountain. I don't think that I'm a super sensitive person by any means, but being in the pedo clinic has gotten to me a few times. My second experience treating a pediatric patient in school had me on the verge of a yelling match with the parent in the waiting room...yeah, it was so bad I ended up scolding the parent in front of 20 other people. I completely lost it with this lady...not my greatest moment in dentistry. It's not the child's fault, its the neglectful and ignorant parents. That's what makes it so hard to swallow.

Good luck, I don't mean to discourage anyone, but just hope you get a proper outlook before perusing a career that involves so much.

Heads up "pedodontist" is an archaic term, they use pediatric dentist now
Click to expand...


It's funny because this post starts off from the tone of someone who knows what they are talking about, but then the rest is riddled with misconceptions and errors.

Anyone can do a class II on a well-behaved child. However, 99% of GPs do not have a true understanding of growth and development and it's importance on treatment decisions for pediatric patients. Go to dentaltown and see how few GPs even know when to properly diagnose a tooth needing a p/ssc and then how to even do it correctly. Proper space maintenance? Forget about it...most GPs do not have a proper understanding. Decisions in young children have a significant impact on the treatment/ortho downstream. Pediatric dentists do way more than just drill and fill so I'd suggest shadowing a few more before making incorrect assumptions (and then passing them off as if you are a well-informed source). Even well-rounded practices see a very small proportion of medically compromised children. It has nothing to do with the fact that they want a "soccer-mom practice", but more so to do with the fact that most syndromes, etc occur in very small numbers in general. A snapshot of a pediatric dentist's patient pool will be representative of the real world outside of their practice, with maybe a slightly higher % of medically compromised children.

Pedo is volume volume volume. I may work 4 days a week but in those 4 days I probably do more work than most of my friends outside of dentistry do in 2 weeks. For me personally I cover 2 ops and 2 hygiene. The hygiene are scheduled every 30 mins and the ops usually 1 hour. That's 6 patients per hour, with several emergencies worked in, time for new patients and also other tx worked in. I'd say on avg I will see 40 patients per day, many of whom hover around 5 years old. I absolutely love it but it's hard work and extremely hectic at times.

Honestly your medicaid comments are ignorant quite frankly and I'm not too interested in wasting any more time countering them. 38' fountains? HAHA Really unless you cut corners it's hard to feed your family taking medicaid. That's why no one does. Go to dentaltown and look up the dentist facing 100+ years in jail over 8k in billing discrepancies over a few years from taking medicaid. You are way off base there and need to learn a bit more before sounding off like that.

One last point...most of the kids are excellent but they take PATIENCE. GPs don't have that patience. They'd rather be doing a crown where their $$/chair time is much higher than taking 5 mins to explain what a rubber dam is to a kid. GPs simply aren't set up to profit off pedo much because of how long it takes and how little the profit is. I'd say most do it as a service to their adult patients or for personal enjoyment. That's the difference...pedos take time with the children and make things look very easy but there's a lot more going on behind the scenes that you can't understand yet.

Also, the competition for residencies has not shot up recently. The percieved competition may have but the actual numbers (applicants, interviews, accepted spots) has stayed at a relatively steady level for quite a few years. Yet another statement unfounded.
 
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Cap -
Is peds considered similar to ortho/OMFS in terms of its competitiveness? (i.e. the residency forum's "top 10% in class, 90% on the boards, etc." standard)
 
Not really, but for some programs it will hold true (cinci, osu, baylor, unc, florida, a few others I'm sure) but there are a bunch where people match with much lower. My residency (cinci) interviewed some people with boards in 80s and a lower class rank.
 
I'm not saying that I'm super-interested in peds at this point, but I have the utmost respect for those that can do it.

As I get into the meat of dental school, I see myself getting involved with research. Flipping through the faculty profiles (in all of the specialties) at UNC, I see Dr. Wright works on amelogenesis imperfecta. As someone who's been living with osteogenesis imperfecta, I think it'd be cool to work with him in some capacity. Did you do dental school at UNC? If so, did you get involved in peds research?
 
I did go to UNC for dental school but did not do research. Although I do read the literature I'm not the research-type, I'm much more of a clinician. That was also my reasoning for not applying to UNC for pedo. Dr Wright is a nice guy and would be great to work with.
 
If I have a choice, I do not treat pedo patients, esp anyone younger than age 8. Most of the time, when I have to work on a young kid, it's because of the urgency of the situation, involving infection that needs simple extraction,etc....
Anybody can do class 2 or class 3 restoration. But I choose not to do it. Reasoning with a kid wastes so much of my time and I'm better off making money doing RCT or crown. That's why I would leave most of my pedo patients to a pedodontist. So, pedodontists would see tons of patients from GP like me. That's where the volume coming from in pediatric dentistry. It's a great & tough specialty, and not every one can do it.
 
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