This week I spoke to a third year dental student who had contacted the practice looking for some insight and pointers towards a future career in the profession after his mum had attended for treatment.
We had a meeting on Zoom to chew the fat for 30 minutes, him in the hope that he could get some insights into his future career and me to see if he might work with us in 5 years time.
And so, I was reminded of myself in 1991 and wondered what the conversation would have gone like if I’d managed to seek out someone in my position to talk to as a third year dental student.
In 1991 there was almost no private dentistry in the UK.
In 1991 we were a year before a huge and controversial NHS fee cut which led to massive reduction in dentists income and a move towards the independent sector for at least a small proportion of the profession.
In 1991 there was no multi-chair orthodontics in the UK and most of the practice based orthodontics was removable appliances and orthodontists didn’t make an awful lot of money.
In 1991 there were almost no loupes for magnification or microscopes and no real specialities in dentistry and no one focusing on molar Endo or Endo in general and almost no one was placing dental implants.
In 1991 you went into a career in hospital dentistry or in head and neck surgery or you went into NHS practice.
If you were very progressive you charged privately for white crowns.
In 1991 no one had a computer on the reception desk and no one had a mobile phone, there was no such thing as websites and no emails.
It took me 18 years from 1991 until I first had a partnership in a practice, it took me almost 30 to open the clinic that I’m in now.
The dentist who I spoke to was looking for tips and advice of how they might own their own business in a world which is very much different to 1991.
As happens now with these conversations, with people early into the profession, they are obsessed with specialisation and see this as the route to satisfaction and remuneration and recognition and so, often these young colleagues are disappointed with my assessment of the situation which is that the ‘average’ dentist will likely earn less and less because average will not be rewarded.
The barriers to ownership will get higher and higher and less and less achievable for most young dentists and the route to happiness and success probably lies (at least first of all) in being an exceptional general dentist.
As is often the case in the world now, the ‘one size fits all’ approach to becoming a ‘success’ won’t work.
If everybody does the same thing and gets to the same stage at the same time, who will be in the top 10%?
The other problem is that to someone who is 21 and accumulating an extraordinary amount of debt, the prospect of getting to 5 years and not earning a considerably sum of money seems an unmanageable prospect.
In that conversation with my young colleague (who was fantastic and very receptive and very clever and very motivated) I asked him what he thought the average dentist got paid.
His response was £120,000 per year and so he was terribly disappointed with my assessment of £60,000 a year.
After the conversation with my young colleague I was shown a demonstration of the integration of Xero (the cloud based accountancy software) which has just been integrated into the practice.
It was 1997 that I got my first proper accountant but the work that he did for me then and onwards to 2007 is now completely obsolete as a result of Xero.
What my young colleague needs to understand as he moves towards entering the world and profession of dentistry is how much it will change between now and 2051 and how best to prepare himself for that change.
Blog Post Number - 2841
Leave a comment