What makes a good dental student?
July 14th, 2010In 2009 I had the privilege of providing a week of work experience to Lucy, a sixth form pupil from a school many miles from our practice. I’m always happy to open the doors to someone who feels that dentistry might be the profession for them. For the most part, the school students really have no idea of what dentistry is about. Their only experience is their family dentist back home. Sometimes I AM that family dentist. Seeing the job from the driver’s seat is a very different experience. Often the student appears ambivalent about their career choices and I often hear back that they changed their minds or didn’t get the grades. It’s all part of what work experience is all about. As a young lady said to me this year when I was relating some of the downside to the job, “You’re not selling dentistry as a career very well.” It’s not my job to sell dentistry as a career. You’ll spend 40 years doing it so you really want to make the right choice.
Too often I come across young people who are studying dentistry because their parents thought it would be a good career. Maybe they’ll get lucky and discover a passion and talent for the job. Maybe they won’t and will bumble through a career plagued by dissatisfaction and never even try to fulfil their potential. With most school pupils it’s hard to tell what they’ll be like. With some it leaps out at you that dentistry is not for them.
Back to Lucy. In all the years I have have opened the practice to work experience students, no one made a greater impact than Lucy. From the first day I felt she had a real interest in the work and was passionate about being a dentist. I’m pleased to say that, over the week, I was able to fan the flames and she grew even more determined that dentistry was to be her profession. As a person Lucy was friendly, intelligent and showed great empathy and ability to communicate (a skill many teenagers have yet to develop).
After the week was over I was invigorated and really felt that this was exactly the sort of young person the profession should be attracting.
Last week I heard that Lucy had applied to study dentistry at a UK university…….. and had been rejected. She wasn’t turned down for lack of academic ability, she has that in spades. Lucy was advised that, on the basis of a tick-box personality test, she wasn’t suited to dentistry. Yes, a tick-box personality test. Who decides these things? Probably the sort of people who develop tick-box personality tests. Well I don’t have a tick-box personality!
Unfortunately we are turning into a society based on ’systems’ and management-speak. Funds are directed away from front-line services toward ‘monitoring’ and ‘accountability’ in our hospitals, inspections in dental practices are more concerned about paperwork than the quality of the clinical care and young people have their futures decided on the basis of a few ticks on a sheet of paper, interpreted by a computer.
My advice to Lucy is that she should take a year to see the world and reapply for entry in 2011. At least they can’t doubt her commitment then.
My advice to the admissions staff at the university concerned is that they don’t deserve students of Lucy’s calibre.
Adrian Stewart