You gotta have heart?


The title is taken from a  song from Damn Yankees, You gotta have heart".  Sometimes when I'm teaching at NYU College of Dentistry, I witness the way students handle adversity. Since it probably takes about ten years to truly master dentistry, most experience adversity and even failure on a regular basis. The trick is to not give up. Those destined to become excellent dentists just keep plugging away and don't give up hope. In fact much learning takes place by analyzing why things go wrong. Thomas Edison said it best when responding to a question about all his failures while inventing the incandescent light bulb. He didn't really fail but he had tried 1000 things that didn't work. This philosophy should be applied to dentistry as well.

As dentists we try performing procedures many different ways and to come up with a more perfect recipe we often need to try techniques that don't provide the optimal results we are looking for. That being said it is necessary to recognize our "failures" and keep striving for a more perfect solution. Character is a trait that in my mind is a prerequisite for truly great dentists. They must recognize their shortcomings and continue to strive to be the best dentists they can be.

Last week I went to my son David's white coat ceremony and there is a part where the students recite a pledge that they will put their patients needs first. The pledge, although somewhat corny should be a dentists primary mission: To help their patients and to do their very  best to maintain their oral heath. Pleasing an employer, making tons of money or driving a fancy car is really beside the point. Helping  patients by providing the best dentistry possible should be our primary mission.

The pleasure in dentistry is that we can, through our mastery of dental skills often accomplish this goal and really make a difference. Having this  purpose in life is to my mind one of the secrets to living a happy and meaningful life.

from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2020/02/you-gotta-have-heart.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help! My Child is Terrified of the Dentist

Image
If you’re the parent of a young child, you know their brains are similar to sponges that soak up everything around them—especially in their first five years, which neuroscientists say is when they’ll do the most learning and developing in their entire life. At this formative time, your child may amaze you with what they notice: your facial expressions, the different tones of your voice, and your habits. If your habits include regular dental visits and an excellent oral hygiene routine, they’ll notice and want to emulate you. If you happen to feel anxious about your dental visits, or you groan when you’ve got to floss and brush, they may synchronize and feel your dread. This could lead to dental fears that stick with them for years—potentially a lifetime! Kids Can Be Courageous If you’re feeling guilty right now, go ahead and put that away as it won’t serve you or your little one. Everyone has some room for improvement, and Coastal Pediatric Dentistry® is here to help show you an
Read more

Going for the Gold?

Image
On the left is the older allow, on the right the new one that my lab has chosen to use The cost of a penny weight of pure gold is currently $79.53. The cost of a penny weight of pure palladium is $130.6. It used to be that palladium was added instead of gold to the precious metals often used for pfms, but now laboratories are finding that palladium is no longer affordable. The lab that I am using has just changed the formulation of the metal it's using to one that has more gold than palladium. I really do not mind, but metals with more gold are softer and often easier for a dentist to accidentally polish off delicate margins. It is important when polishing "higher gold" formulations to exert less hand pressure when performing the final polishing of the crown's margins. Other wise there should be no problem with this change. Traditionally labs have chosen alloys with higher gold percentages for optimal esthetics, since alloys with higher concentrations of
Read more

Tongue Ties: What Parents Need to Know

Image
For a long time, people just didn’t seem to know much about tongue ties. In the early years of my practice, few of my patients had ever heard of a tongue tie. When I pointed out that they or their children might be tongue tied, I was often the very first practitioner who’d mentioned it to them. When I told them that a tongue tie might actually be the root cause of their oral myofunctional issues, or even their sleep apnea , I’m sure that some of them thought I was crazy. But in the last few years, things have changed so much! Initially, there was a small increase in the number of patients who were contacting me specifically about tongue ties. Dentists and orthodontists also began reaching out more frequently to discuss the application of myofunctional therapy exercises to tongue tie treatment. But in the last year or so, that little bit of interest has become a surge of awareness. Tongue ties and their effects on health and craniofacial development are finally becoming mainstream.
Read more