Two years ago, I had a choice live in an apartment or a dental school dorm. I did not expect to be making that decision in my mid-twenties. As you start dental school, you may be weighing those same options. Making the decision can be hard. I had not lived in a dorm before.
Finally, after years of hard work, good grades and months of submitting applications, you’ve been accepted into dental school. The pressure is off.
At that point in your life, if you were to have closed your eyes and gazed into your future what would you have seen? What was your vision? Did you see yourself in a traditional private practice where you were an extension of your patient family? A situation similar your family dentist or mentor? Did you envision the newest hi-tech gadgets in a stylish office in a medical/dental complex?
Preparing for the DAT can be one of the most exciting, yet challenging times during a predental’s journey to dental school. You may become overwhelmed trying to find the best study materials or choosing a DAT preparation course. What most students do not realize is that success comes from not only how you utilize materials, but your time as well. One effective strategy is to adopt the mindset of an athlete training for a major event, such as a marathon.
This article originally appeared as the lead news story in the May 2014 issue of ASDA News. To read more from ASDA’s print publication, Contour, click here.
A fearful patient can pose a considerable treatment challenge, especially for dental students who may unintentionally miss signals that their patient is uncomfortable.
Dr. Peter Milgrom, professor of oral health sciences at the University of Washington and founder and former director of its Dental Fears Research Clinic, believes that students lacking clinical experience “tend to completely focus on technical procedures” or “feel under pressure to perform at a certain rate” because of clinic time constrictions or limited rest breaks.
There’s a pretty good chance that if you have student loans (and even if you don’t), you have received a flyer or some type of marketing piece describing how much interest you would save if you “refinanced” your student loans. There has been tremendous growth in the private student loan market and with that growth has come lots of marketing that has left recent grads confused and unsure about their debt. This post will discuss various aspects of refinancing your loans with a private lender and some of the potential negative consequences.
You know how every chef movie has an aspiring sous chef who admires the head chef, but the head chef either doesn’t have the desire or can’t seem to find time to mentor the sous chef? In this regard, the dental profession is no different from the food preparation profession.
Everyone talks about mentor relationships. Some people have them, but would like more. Some people would like to find just one. No matter how you slice it, if you’d like a mentor, you will probably have to do something to initiate the relationship. So how do you go about creating a mentor relationship with a faculty or senior colleague?
As dental students, our experiences involving patient communication are rather limited. While we have the ability to practice our craft on a manikin, we can never fully prepare ourselves for the different scenarios where we may need to manage a patient in order to provide quality care. This three-part video series focuses on how to navigate difficult communication situations, so that hopefully you would be prepared when faced with a similar situation!
Now that you’ve learned how to manage an emotionally charged patient (see part I) and how to deal with time delays (see part II), it’s time to learn ways to manage patient expectations.
