The dentists that I have had the oppurtunity to shadow have also been great. The first time I shadowed I called and scheduled my shadowing appointment with their front offices. After shadowing for the scheduled day, both dentists told me to come back when ever and as often as I wanted. They told me I could just show up whenever I felt like shadowing and there was need to call into the office, pretty nice of them. I'm very greatful for the oppurtunities and make sure and thank them and their staff every day when leaving.
Another experience that I have enjoyed was making arrangements to shadow some dental specialists in my town. Though I think it's important to get most of your hours shadowing general dentists, if you start getting a fair amount of hours it's a nice change of scenery and it exposes you to other areas of dentistry. I have been able to shadow an orthodontist, endodontist, and an oral surgeon.
It was pretty funny shadowing the oral surgeon. He informed me that it is fairly common for people observing to pass out. Luckily I made it through without hitting the floor 😀 It's just so different seeing the procedures that an oral surgeon does compared to say a complete soft tissue surgery. I don't know what it is about the sounds of cracking bone and such but it just seems kind of gross, he said it does take a little getting use to. The best procedure he did that day was performing a bone grapht (sp) on a woman. He had to go in through the lower lip, expose the chin bone, cut a piece of bone off about 16mm X 6mm, and then attach it to the mandible with screws for a future implant. It was pretty cool to see the procedure and he was great about letting get up close and look into her mouth so that I could see that various stages. He told me to come back as often as I wanted, but once may have been enough at this time in my shadowing experience, heh 🙂
