Sadly (in my view anyway) we are still at the tail end of the entrepreneurial revolution in dentistry, with some graduates exiting Dental School hoping to hit the ground running to become millionaires as fast as possible. This is not a good thing I don’t think.
This is certainly fuelled by a belief that existed probably 5 – 7 years ago and beyond when these individuals entered Dental School. When they thought it would provide them with the chance to ‘print money’. It is clear to all of us within the profession that the game has changed entirely since that time.
Some years ago I lectured to a VT group and soon afterwards one of the VT’s who I had spoken to came to meet me at the practice to have a look around. We had a conversation in my office afterwards that I will never forget, when the individual told me that they were fed up of dentistry (half way through VT). They had decided to set up a practice. They would do this with a business partner who would help to fund it and they would set up a ‘spa’ dental practice, then potentially a chain of ‘spa’ dental practices around the country. This was to begin to happen when the person in question was still a VT and by the time of finals in second year there would be at least two practices on the go.
This was some years ago now and it didn’t work. As far as I understand the individual failed with massive debt and had to work in clinical dentistry afterwards to help pay for the debt that they had accumulated.
There was a time where the word entrepreneur was held in very high esteem, you would hear it in songs on the radio and see it written everywhere. It was a badge of honour. People wanted to call themselves an entrepreneur. It meant much more than someone who had the ability to build businesses (a learned skill I think). It meant someone who was an ‘over night success’, it was stardom, it was fame, it was glitz and glamour, it was cars, suits, fancy holidays and big houses.
For a while now at The Campbell Clinic we have had an agenda to tell the real story to guys going into Dental School about what it will be like when they come out.
This is not to discourage the right people from going into dentistry, in fact it is quite the opposite. It’s to discourage people who will be disappointed when they leave with a 6 figure debt and an average salary for an associate heading towards the mid £30,000’s a year. So a debt that is almost unmanageable to pay off, even within the lifetime of a working dentist.
We decided to do this through talking to people at schools, to encourage people to do dentistry for the right reasons but also to warn them about the debt trap. We have interns now who work within the dental practice who are dental students, Matt Giudici being the most famous one so far. We have A-Level students who attend for extensive work experience programmes to show them what it is like working in a practice like ours and how they can aspire to get there. Accepting that it is a long road of training and experience that is wonderful if you embrace it, but that might not buy you the shiny bright objects that you had thought about or been told about.
The guys and girls who made it big in dentistry are almost always people who put their nose to the grindstone and worked really hard for 20 years. Generally they learn the skill of dentistry and communication with patients during that time afterwards.
Blog Post Number - 1356
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