It must always seem the same, and I'm sure it did to me that the older guys that you speak to, the ancient ones, know nothing and have no idea what it is to live as young people do.
And so, this week at The Campbell Academy, we hosted 64 DFT’s.
For those of you who are not dentally initiated, these are first-year graduate dentists who are working in practise to acclimatise themselves to the way of work.
I've been teaching DFTs since 1998, with a small break in the middle when the practices were sold that I worked in.
It’s extraordinary and often a wonderful experience to meet people who are motivated and energised towards patient care and looking after people and making a difference, but there is still an undertone of people who think the world owes them a living and who will not listen to what looks like the dangers that are coming to dentistry down the road.
On both days, I did a short introduction. On the first one I did, ‘Welcome to Colin's house’, I talked about that and talked about the challenges that exist for young dentists moving forward in a nice and pleasant way. I asked them not to steal things and asked them to be kind while they were here.
That was the day when someone was inappropriate to one of my team.
And the second day, I decided to go a bit harder and explain to these guys that the direction of travel is that the government has decided it wants 5000 new graduates to enter the United Kingdom in the next 5 years, by extension of the overseas regulations and the examination associated with that.
There are 30,000 odd dentists in the UK, and many of those work in hospitals, and to a 5000 increase in dental practitioners is hugely significant.
That's a question of supply and demand; the more dentists there are, the less valuable a dentist is, and the less money they get paid.
It’s simple economics, and governments know about simple economics.
The second thing is that the expansion of therapists who are committed and educated, skilful, and motivated will outstrip many of the mediocre dentists.
While a therapist may not extract a tooth or cut a crown prep, 90% of the dentistry that's done, and particularly in the NHS, will be able to be done by therapists, if this is the case, you have to prove that you are much better than a therapist and are able to do much more work which generates much more fees in order to occupy a position of authority within dentistry.
People don't seem to think that that's a problem, and they don't seem to think that it's a risk.
Finally, there is the societal attitudes which have now begun to pass through the whole of society, which is that working 5 days a week is something wrong and that you should be working less than that but for more money.
Many dentists that I speak to who are recently qualified can't fathom the prospect of 5 days a week of work and are looking for places where they can work for say 3 and a half days a week, or 2 jobs, split over 3.5 days a week to give them a long weekend that they deserve because it was so hard going to university.
This is so entirely at odds with how I hit the ground when I qualified, worked harder in my first year out than I worked for my finals, and sat exams that were way more difficult than my final exams in dentistry. I studied every single night after work (working full-time) and volunteered for on-call positions to increase my experience.
I travelled to Ireland under my own steam with under my own funds to set my primary FDS exam (which I passed the first time when there was a pass rate of 7%). I travelled back, worked every day until I finished as a house officer and then travelled to England, where I knew no one, to start my next job in maxillofacial surgery.
In the months running up to Christmas in 1995, I worked 100,120 and 110 hours in those three weeks.
The world doesn't owe you a living, and it doesn't owe me a living, but as a dentist with the degree that I qualified with, the opportunities are extraordinary, but they don't come on their own, and they don't jump into your pocket. You have to earn them, grab them and take them.
Blog Post Number - 4547