Working for a dentist but not doing dental work - how do you quantify that?

[craigory]

So I was just wondering about this - if you worked for a dentist, with that dentist, in his office, as an employee of his practice - but you weren't necessarily helping with a procedure or doing something "dental", do you put that under work experience or dental experience on AADSAS?

I can't tell you how many hours I spent taking out garbage, painting the walls, cleaning, organizing supplies, fixing the computer system and printers, essentially doing all manner of miscellaneous work - just to kiss enough ass to get to spend six or seven hours shadowing.

Sure, you may be working with a dentist, and I guess there is a case to be made for seeing the maintenance and "daily work" that is involved in running a practice - but it's not really "dental experience" now is it?

I'm wondering because the first time I applied, I left all of it off. The second time I applied, I put it on my app at the behest of an advisor, but explained what my "work" really consisted of most of the time (so I'm sure it's essentially meaningless to the adcoms). However, this is the same dentist who wrote my LOR, so at least I got something out of this.

For those of you with a similar experience, what did you do?


edit: Technically, I should have said "qualify that" - not "quantify that" in the thread title, right?

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[murff05]

I put working at the practice solely under dental experience not under work, which I reserved for my other paid jobs outside of dentistry. Since the application allows you to select paid employee and shadowing at the same time, I just selected both.

So only as dental experience.

 

[chitownsmiles]

I think it's dental experience. Just being in and around the office I'm sure you gained dental knowledge even if you didn't realize it at the time. I worked at a dental clinic doing outreach but I still learned a ton about dentistry just by eating lunch with the dentists every day, asking them questions, etc even though I wasn't chairside.

 

[Kkae]

Thats in no way dental experience.
This is just work experience. This is just like watching a surgeon for a couple years and then saying ur a surgoen.

So, yeah... work experinec!