Imagine sitting in the waiting room of a dental office at your first associate interview. You’ve prepared all night and put on your best suit. You meet with your potential employer, and everything is going great — until he/she asks an inappropriate personal question.
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If you are considering pursuing a residency after dental school, you may feel overwhelmed by the options. Residency programs are small, and reliable information can be hard to find. Every one will have its own unique advantages and drawbacks, and it will be up to you to network and find information on the individual programs that interest you. I am currently halfway through my 12-month AEGD residency at the South Texas Veterans Health Care System in San Antonio, Texas.
For any specialty resident, dental school graduation is a tease. While friends leave to begin their careers, you’re off to the trenches of postgraduate education. Residency has been one of the most challenging yet rewarding parts of my professional pursuit. I hope to share five ways that will ease your transition into residency.
Traditionally, many students graduate after four years of dental school and enter a residency or the civilian workforce. However, there is another group of dental school graduates who will serve in the military following graduation. Many of these graduates were awarded a scholarship from the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP).
If things are going as planned, it’s likely that in the near future, you will (finally!) be searching for a job. While finding a job may be your next most difficult hurdle, once you find a job, you will get one chance, and one chance only, to negotiate the best job package you can for yourself. Your negotiating power ends the moment you sign on the dotted line. But when you know that you have no experience, and you’re completely ecstatic that you found a job that you like, how are you supposed to find the wherewithal to negotiate for yourself?
At this time of year, we have become accustomed to answering two questions asked by third-year dental students. The first is: “Should I apply to residency programs?” The second is: “How do I know which residency program is right for me?”
Imagine yourself 10 years from now, running a successful dental practice in your hometown. After a long day of seeing patients, you run through a mental checklist of everything that needs to be done. Did all the lab work get sent out? Are charts up to date? Did the front desk call patients to remind them of their appointments?
What if you also had to figure out what time Kobe Bryant’s helicopter would land outside your office? Or navigate through 20 miles of infamous Southern California rush hour traffic to make it just in time for tipoff ? This is the world of Dr. Jeffrey Hoy, the team dentist for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.
