Fake it till you make it?

It is not uncommon for young recently graduated dentists to feel like fakers. Yes they are licensed but if they are truly honest, there is still a lot for them to learn. Young health professionals often face a moral dilemma. While their "book learning" is the most up to date that their dental schools were able to provide in four years, they are often lacking the type clinical experience that may take years to obtain. Since they often have enormous debt from their educational loans and  a simultaneous desire to start living the "good life, after years of sacrifice spent as a student, they may feel a pressure to provide dentistry that they do not feel fully confident to perform.

In some ways they are a little like agent 007. They have a license to drill but still need to use their discretion on deciding which cases to  take on. They need be able to project the image of a knowledgeable health professional but sometimes all dentists see a set of dental problems that can seem over whelming.  This can be especially common for recent graduates who don't have the advantage of many years of clinical practice experience.  Sometimes taking on a difficult cases is tempting since it may provide both a great opportunity for learning and also a great financial reward, but only if the proper cases are selected. Further more they need to be executed in a timely manner with the proper technique.

Fortunately todays young dentists, it they choose, are able to partially  prepare for these cases on YouTube or using online training videos.  These  can be wonderful ways to learn new techniques. Unfortunately, these online tutorials can't really substitute from actual experience and they often do not go enough detail for inexperienced  dental practitioners to become "instant" experts. After all, practice makes perfect and dentists add to their knowledge base with each case they tackle. The trick is to get enough experience to become both confident and competent enough for the type of cases they are selecting.

Young dentists should  acknowledge that they themselves can't know it all, especially in their first years of dental practice and would be wise become friendly with some more experienced practitioners whom maybe offer helpful advice. Continuing education taken with a mixture of different aged dentists is a great help, since while attending these courses and venues, both experienced and relatively inexperienced dentists have the opportunity to mingle and invariably the conversations include problems that they are facing. For  young dentists, these meetings can have a dual function of teaching new techniques as well as allowing them interactions with  more experienced dentists. Older dentists are often happy to share their knowledge with younger members of our profession.

The truth is that all experienced  dentists owe a debt of gratitude to the dentists who came before them since at one point or another all were tutored by older colleagues.   In the mean time, young dentists still must find away to project competence to their patients, even when they are unsure of how to proceed. Taking photos and study models in these instances is a great way to proceed. All dentists  shouldn't need to give definitive answers or treatment plans when first meeting patients.  Taking "records"  (radiographs, photos and study models) and consulting with other specialists or more experienced dentists, can be a great way to proceed in those instances. In this way, each of these patients becomes a learning experience, whether the dentists chooses to tackle their case or instead refer it out to another dentist with more experience.






from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2019/03/fake-it-till-you-make-it.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/