You know, I really, really like the public setting as opposed to the private setting for shadowing for a few reasons. One, I think those at the hospital (the students) would be much, much more open to answering your questions. I've had the opportunity to work with several fourth year dental students in a community health clinic and those guys love to help. And there are a lot of them. In a private practice, they usually have the head dentist and they are in a rush a lot of the time. Also, in the public setting, you would probably be able to get a hands on experience. They don't have as many regulations and you might notice that these dental students are trained to work alone as opposed to the private practice where the dentist has 4 or 5 assistants at his/her disposal. So yeah, who knows, you might help. And finally, the people at the public practice will probably be more willing to vouch for you. At least in my experience, the dentist in the public practice takes you under their wing and wants you to become a dentist yourself because I guess the supervising dentist wants to see awesome future dentists. Call them up. Ask if you can volunteer. Notice, not shadow, volunteer. And if not, ask to shadow. I'm sure they would be more open than a private practice.
