How to Become a Dentist

Video Transcript

"We have here-this is just a kind of a basic dental light that basically kind of hovers over every chair, and very important again at creating more high visibility. The light is very, very bright so when shined on the patient's mouth it can illuminate it to a very great factor that we can see things that we wouldn't normally be able to see without. When I graduated dental school, I actually didn't know where my career path led. I didn't know if I wanted to specialize. I didn't know if I wanted to work in a hospital. I didn't know if I wanted to be in private practice, so my first job was actually joining the military. One thing nice about the military was you didn't really have to make any sort of commitments to what you wanted to do in dentistry, and I knew that I did not know where I wanted to be. I didn't know where I wanted to live, and I didn't know if I wanted to just practice general dentistry or specialize, so my career path basically took me in the military where I could become general dentist, do a little bit of traveling and then certainly get a little bit of exposure to all the different facets of dentistry. Once I left the military, I decided that I wanted to go into private practice. I wanted to basically have my own business. I wanted to be able to get into a situation where I could set my own hours. I would determine my earning potential. I certainly wanted to be the one that dictates my vacations, and so what I did was when I separated, I purchased an existing dental practice. It's from there that I basically started to build a practice then of my own that I could kind of set all my priorities straight and kind of get the business how I wanted it to run. I went and pursued the military because I didn't know exactly where I wanted to practice, and I didn't even know what I wanted to do in dentistry. My opportunity to practice in the military gave me exposure to a lot of different disciplines of dentistry and also put me in scenarios that were much different that you'd see in a private practice outcome, so for me it was just an issue of getting some more experience and exposure to kind of guide me into what kind of dentist that I wanted to be. In the military, certainly, we primarily deal with people that deploy and go to war, so certainly the treatment scenarios that we can present to them are much different than in private practice because there's a lot more limitations. For example, someone who may need something really complicated that's cosmetic, they may not necessarily have time to get something like that because of their availability, where in private practice, basically the sky's the limit. You can do whatever you want to do or whatever the patient wants to do, so in terms of flexibility, there's a lot less flexibility as far as the treatment options you can present and basically the access and availability to care. Certainly, where you practice is going to dictate what kind of dentistry you can provide, so practicing in Nashville, Tennessee versus doing dentistry in Iraq is going to be a lot different as far as the dentistry that you can do on a patient."