Taking a break from dentistry

[e00z]

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I'm not a dentist yet so please pardon the possible naivety of this question...

Can a dentist take a break from their profession? For example, are there any instances where dentists just up and leave the country for a year to explore the world? Do their hand skills deteriorate? Is it possible to come back to the profession months later and pick up where you left off?

I assume that it would be much harder if you owned your own practice. What about if you're an associate dentist? Could you realistically just quit your job, travel for 6 months, come back and then re-apply for a position, and resume your life? Does anybody do this?

I would love to travel the world. And in many professions, people say that once they enter the working world, they no longer have the time to travel, or only have a few weeks at most every year dedicated as vacation time. I hope this does not apply to the field of dentistry. Thank you.

 

[crax]

I'm not a dentist yet so please pardon the possible naivety of this question...

Can a dentist take a break from their profession? For example, are there any instances where dentists just up and leave the country for a year to explore the world? Do their hand skills deteriorate? Is it possible to come back to the profession months later and pick up where you left off?

I assume that it would be much harder if you owned your own practice. What about if you're an associate dentist? Could you realistically just quit your job, travel for 6 months, come back and then re-apply for a position, and resume your life? Does anybody do this?

I would love to travel the world. And in many professions, people say that once they enter the working world, they no longer have the time to travel, or only have a few weeks at most every year dedicated as vacation time. I hope this does not apply to the field of dentistry. Thank you.

why just travel weeks at a time, a flight round trip might cost 1.000. This way you can spend some more, and not lose your whole patient base by flip flopping dentists every year, unless somehow you transition an associate in and out.

 

[DentinBond]

As an owner dentist, (in a partnership, two of us, only one goes away at a time), it has always seemed to me that one's busyness drops off logarithmically with time away from the office. In other words, go away for a week, and you're still pretty much booked when you get back. Go away for two weeks, your schedule is very thin. Go away for three weeks- well, I've never done that, but I'd expect to have a lot of rebuilding to do.

This has to do with the fact that you're not doing any hygiene exams and not seeing any new patients during that time away. With a partner, the effect is reduced in severity because your partner can schedule patients who prefer you, with you, after you get back, if they need simple treatment. If you were solo and just closed your office totally- again, a week is no problem. But I'd expect three weeks away to result in a time period of almost two months to really build back up. You just lose your steam, and the effect is not linear.

As an associate, yes, you could leave a position and then travel for an extended time and then apply for a new position. Still, much of dentistry, in any ownership or associate arrangement, is about forming lasting affinities with your patients. You're selling YOU, and also health and wellness, not chunks of porcelain or surfaces to be billed. It's all about relationships. This is especially true in the world we now live in, where so many businesses have anonymized and corporatized and systematized everything to the point where the element of human connection has been lost for a long time. Most dentists have never done that, we're better than that and we do build relationships with our patients. We connect.

If you sever that, say in an associateship, for a good cause like traveling the world to see what's out there, do it ethically and respectfully, making sure that you tail off in a way where most cases in progress are truly completed by the time you leave. And then be ready to start from scratch when you return.

 

[e00z]

thank you for your informative response. really appreciated 🙂

 

[full]

Hmmm...maybe there is a way to practice in the other countries for just a minimal amount (e.g 4 hrs/week) just to retain your skill?

 

[Saddleshoes]

First, I am not typical!

That said, I have walked away from dentisty twice in my career,for 6 months at a time. Once when I got married and sold a private practice, I took 6 months off to travel with my new bride. A second time when I left a job with so much unused timeoff I could spend 6 months traveling and investigating my next professional move.

Each time I returned it took a little while to regain my "touch for the bur". But as the old saying goes, "It's like riding a bike." It comes back fast.

 

[DrJeff]

As an owner dentist, (in a partnership, two of us, only one goes away at a time), it has always seemed to me that one's busyness drops off logarithmically with time away from the office. In other words, go away for a week, and you're still pretty much booked when you get back. Go away for two weeks, your schedule is very thin. Go away for three weeks- well, I've never done that, but I'd expect to have a lot of rebuilding to do.

This has to do with the fact that you're not doing any hygiene exams and not seeing any new patients during that time away. With a partner, the effect is reduced in severity because your partner can schedule patients who prefer you, with you, after you get back, if they need simple treatment. If you were solo and just closed your office totally- again, a week is no problem. But I'd expect three weeks away to result in a time period of almost two months to really build back up. You just lose your steam, and the effect is not linear.

.

So much truth in this statement. If you're a GP, the amount of work that you pick up (read as fill your schedule with) from your regular hygiene exams is far greater the vast majority of the time than what you get fromnew patients calling up your office. A week away. Not a big deal, since you tend to have your schedule filled a bit heavier in the few days leading upto your vacation and also when you get back. Plus when you get back, you tend to have an extra week of emergency procedures (read as endo's, crowns via broken cusps, etc), so personally I tend to find that my monthly production doesn't suffer very much when I take a week off and my schedule remains full. That being said, I have a partner, who with the exception of 1 week a year when we shut the entire office down, we always plan our vacation weeks so that they don't coincide. When i'm gone, my partner checks my hygiene patients and since we have very similar treatment planning philosophies when I see those patients of mine that he checked in my schedule after vacation, I'm 98% sure that I'm going to agree with the assesment he made at the hygiene exam, and vice versa.

If you're a solo GP, what you tend to do is get one of your local collaegues to cover emergencies for you while your on vacation. Would they cover for your for a month or longer?? Probably, but you'd also find that unless your paying your staff that you might loose them while your gone and/or loose a noticeable amount of your patient base.

What I've found that works for me vacation wise is that 2 weeks tends to be a bit too much with respect to patient continuity/satisfaction (I've twice taken a 2 week vacation in the 15 years I've been in practice and it took a solid couple of months to really get my schedule filled back up both interms of patient volume and production volume), 1 week isn't quite enough time for me to really relax, so I split the difference and take 10 day vacations where I take the Friday leading into my vacation week off and then return to work 10 days later on the Monday after my vacation week. Works for me that way of finding the balance between me chilling out and my business of dentistry not suffering.😀

 

[drgioiadds]

First, I am not typical!

That said, I have walked away from dentisty twice in my career,for 6 months at a time. Once when I got married and sold a private practice, I took 6 months off to travel with my new bride. A second time when I left a job with so much unused timeoff I could spend 6 months traveling and investigating my next professional move.

Each time I returned it took a little while to regain my "touch for the bur". But as the old saying goes, "It's like riding a bike." It comes back fast.

Nice!!! I'm returning to school, but still may try to find occasional work. Wouldn't ever want to give it up completely.