Hi everyone, I'm Prateek and I'm a dentist and specially doctor and in this video we're going
to be looking at dental core training but more specifically the advantages and disadvantages
of doing dental core training. I did two years of dental core training and there are lots of things
looking back I wish I'd known before I embarked upon this so hopefully through this video I'll
give you a bit more information so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want
to go ahead with dental core training. Before we go on I just quickly want to let you know that my
book Single Best Answer Questions for Dentistry is now available for order online. This is an
excellent revision resource for anyone sitting the MJDF/MFDS exams or ORE exams as well as any dental
student at any stage of dental school. It has over 280 single best answer questions along with high
quality images and colour-coded chapters. Every question has an associated explanation for the
answer as well. You can get this book directly from the Wiley website and use the code VBT65 for a 20%
discount or alternatively you can get it from any other leading bookstore. I really hope you find
this book useful it's taking a lot of work but I'm very proud of what we've got at the end of it.
If you do find it useful then please share it with other people. All the links, the discount codes
everything are in the description below. So what is dental core training? Dental core training refers
to postgraduate training that you can do following your foundation year. Dentists will typically
qualify from university and, if they want to work on the NHS, they'll go and do their foundation year
and then you've got the option of doing these extra dental core training years. You don't have to
do them immediately after foundation year, though most people if they're going to do them tend
to do them at this point. You can do up to three years though you don't have to do all three years
and you can do a range of specialties and every year that you do could be a different specialty.
I will put links to the applicant guide in the description which gives you a bit more information
but I think the most important thing from this video that I want you to be aware of are the
advantages and disadvantages of doing dental core training. In terms of my experience, I did two
years of dental core training. I did one year in a large teaching hospital doing Maxillofacial
Surgery and then my second year in a smaller district general doing Maxillofacial Surgery and
I've stayed on there now doing specialty doctor role. Personally, I found dental core training
extremely valuable and I'd recommend it to anyone. But before I went on dental core training, I found
there was a lack of resources to inform me as to what the advantages and disadvantages would be
of actually doing it and now looking back there are certain things that I'm more aware of that
I'd wish I'd known then and hopefully through this video I'll give you a better idea of those things.
So similar to your foundation year, dental core training is a national recruitment process
so you all apply via an online platform; you then get chosen for interview and then you
get ranked based on your interview results and matched up with jobs. I will do a bit more about
this in a separate application video regarding dental core training both for during COVID as
well as one for later on once hopefully COVID is all settled down - but that's a brief overview of
what dental core training involves. Some people may know it as a senior house officer role, SHO role.
Now the most up-to-date term is dental core trainee. The most important resource to visit is
the COPDEND website. That has all the documents in terms of the applicant guide, the job descriptions,
the process of interviewing - everything is there all the dates regarding the application
also on there though they are here as well and that will help you kind of guide you through
your application. So even before we look at the advantages and disadvantages of doing dental core
training, the first thing that you need to consider is why do you actually want to do it? Is it just
because someone has mentioned dental core training so you think well this is something I have to do
as part of my training or is it a genuine interest in some of the topics and subjects involved with
dental core training but it's really important that you identify your exact reason for wanting to do
it. There are lots of jobs available although this number reduces as you go through the core training years
and yes majority of those jobs are Maxillofacial Surgery but there are other jobs such as public
health, restorative dentistry, paediatric dentistry and so there is something there for everyone to
try. So in order to do this video, I considered my own opinions but I also spoke to current and
ex-dental core trainees to see what they thought about the job what they wish they'd known and
what they've learned now to hopefully better inform you so you can make a good decision.
So let's look at the reasons for doing dental core training and and the advantages that you
you can get from doing dental core training. One of the big ones is just getting extra experience.
When we qualify from dental school, we often have a very broad overview of everything but not in
much detail and particular areas, for example, in my case I wanted to get good at managing medically
compromised patients. I didn't want to get worried when a patient comes into my practice and is on 10
20 different medications. I wanted to get better at doing my surgical extractions so that again if I'm
in dental practice I'm not worried about this. If you're interested in restorative dentistry
you may want to get extra experience doing this and so the dental core training year gives you a
very good protected year where you're supervised, you get interesting cases and so you can use this
to build your experience which hopefully you can then take on to your following job role whether
that's in specialty training or whether that's back in practice. The other advantage in terms of
gaining the extra experience is during your dental core training year you can be a bit more bold and
you can try things that you necessarily wouldn't try when you're on your own in a dental practice.
And for me going through the dental core training year, I've learned a huge amount that's made me
far more comfortable in certain situations and I think this is confidence that I gained from the
extra experience from my dental core training year. Along with the extra experience you also expand
your knowledge a great deal. As I touched upon in dental school we we get a very broad overview
of everything - enough to get us through dental school and to make us safe dentists in practice.
But if you really want to know the nitty-gritty and know the details about something or a particular
topic in dental school really perked your interest then you may want to pursue a dental core training
job so that you can learn more about that subject and you can expand your knowledge.
I know far more about Oral surgery and Maxillofacial Surgery than I did three four years ago and that's
simply through my dental core training roles where you have study days, yo u have
supervision, you have interesting cases, you may be in a teaching hospital - all of these factors mean
that you can take a lot more from a job compared to just going straight into dental practice where
the onus is on you to hunt everything down. There are also big perks in terms of the academic
benefits that you can get from a dental core training year. You have the option of doing posters,
oral presentations - all of these factors getting publication so they can bolster your CV, so it
means that later on during your career you have more jobs available to you and you have a greater
variety of jobs available to you. It will also give you the edge over other candidates who may not
have done dental core training. You've also got the added benefit that you're in a in a training year
and so under the Deanery, you have a huge number of study days provided to you as well and all of
these are paid for. If you were a normal dentist in practice, then you're probably going to have to
fork out a large amount of money to go to a lot of these training days. From my dental core training
years, I got a huge number of poster presentations, oral presentations and publications done
and all of this was simply the environment that I was in enabled me to do this. Now don't get me
wrong certain hospitals are more directed towards doing this. If you're in a teaching hospital,
you are more likely to get these presentations and get these posters but that's something to
bear in mind when it comes to applying and when it comes to you preferencing and ranking your jobs.
Now some people I spoke to found that dental core training was just a break from what they
were used to. They'd been working in practice for a few years they got a bit bored in all honesty
and they just wanted a change and so they embarked on dental core training and this
gave them something different to what they were experiencing before. They had new challenges they
had to deal with and so it broke up a relatively monotonous career for them. It also then meant
that it kept their career options open - so that's another big perk of doing dental core training.
You're keeping your options open - I know when I was doing my foundation year a lot of people
apply to dental core training simply because when it came to the end of their foundation year
they didn't know if they were going to have an associate dentist job or whether they needed
another option. So dental core training enables you to keep those options open
not just when it comes to deciding on a job but also in the future when you're presented with a
variety of job options, dental core training gives you that flexibility. And the last
main reason for doing dental core training is it's actually a requirement if you're considering doing
specialty training. At this point, in time a lot of the specialty training jobs require you to
have done some form of dental core training and got some experience in that specialty and
unfortunately a lot of them also want you to have done some Oral Maxillofacial Surgery experience.
I will go into my experience of doing MaxFac DCT jobs in a separate video but it's definitely
something I'd recommend to anyone even if you're thinking about going back into practice. So, we've
had a look at the advantages of doing dental core training but I think it's really important that
when you're making your decision you're aware of some of the potential regrets previous DCTs have
had as well as some disadvantages of doing dental core training. So one of the big disadvantages or
potential problems during dental core training to try and get a lot of what I've mentioned the
presentations, the posters, the experience - it relies on you being proactive so you're the one who has
to approach consultants, approach registrars to make things happen. And a lot of the units
I guess this is true I've experienced it myself. But ultimately for you to maximize what you get
from the year you're going to have to be proactive and you're going to have to be motivated to do it.
So if you think that you're not going to be able to do that or you're going to struggle to do that
then you have to consider are you going to get the most that you can out of that dental core training
year. There are some people who just expect the opportunities to come to them and generally those
opportunities won't arise. So it really, really requires you to be motivated and kind of on it
for your entire year. Along with this in terms of staying motivated and staying on top of things
because it's a training job, you have a portfolio to maintain
so as you will have had through dental school and through your foundation year
you also have a similar portfolio through dental core training where you have to do certain
assessments, you have to have meetings with a supervisor, you have to do reflections
and you have to log everything that you're doing. This has both good things and bad things the advantage
is that later on if you choose specialty training or you apply for a job you've still got a record
and a portfolio of the work you've done and that's something that's really good to have. T he
disadvantage is the actual time you have to put into doing it sometimes it can take a lot of work
and once you've been working all day, particularly if you're in a job that has long hours or on calls,
then you could end up getting quite unmotivated in terms of doing your portfolio then you fall behind
quite quickly. One of the big things to consider if you're looking at a Maxillofacial Surgery job
is the on-call commitment. A lot of people weren't aware of how significant an on-call commitment
would be but some jobs do require you to be on call days, nights, weekends and this can be quite
a big burden for some people. It does mean that your social life's going to take an impact, your
extracurricular activities are going to take an impact but it's something you'll have to accept as
part of that year and you then have to determine is the the benefit you're going to get in terms of
experience outweigh that that disadvantage of losing that social life and those extra things.
Particularly again in a hospital job where you're looking after patients, your patients come first so
if you end up having to go to theatre and you're in theatre beyond your shift hours well you might
have to just accept that and you have to do that you don't get paid extra for it. Now one thing that
even I experienced after doing two years of dental core training is I found that I deskilled a little
bit. It entirely depends upon which job you're going to because I did a surgical job for two
years it meant that my normal restorative skills, when I did eventually go back to practice, needed a
bit more fine tuning before I got up to speed. This is something that can easily be rectified during
our dental core training year if you could work a Saturday depending on your contract, you could keep
some of your skills going. But a lot of colleagues found that they did de-skill a little bit and they
weren't as proficient when they went back into practice. Now one of the big things that we have
to talk about is money. Dental core training years are excellent in the fact that they're salaried.
So you have a salary regardless of whether your patients turn up on not, regardless of what job you
do, regardless of what effort you put in - you are paid a salary. If you think about the COVID year
that we've just had, having a fixed salary is such an important thing and it is a really,
really valuable thing to have. The problem comes when you start comparing your potential salary to
maybe your colleagues who are working in a dental practice. You could go from your foundation year
and work in a practice earning maybe £60-70,000. In your dental core training year, dental
core training one and two you're currently looking at earning roughly between £38-39,000.
And this is before any on-call commitments are added on so once you have on call commitments
added you do get a boost to your salary but it's still not going to be comparable to
what your colleagues may be earning in practice - and particularly because you'll be sacrificing a
lot of your social life and your other activities in order to earn that money. Once you go in to
DCT3, you're looking at slight uplift and you're looking at maybe around £49,000 and again this
is before your own calls are taken into account so it's your base salary but again the number
of years you've probably spent going through to dental core training you're up to your third year
if you're in practice you'd probably be earning more than that so again it's something that you
need to consider - are you there for the money in which case is working in practice better or
are you there for the experience, you accept that you're going to have to contribute some goodwill
you accept you're going to have to work a little extra for that money. And the last thing that does
become important and this is probably why most people will do this early on in their career, is
you may have to relocate with dental core training. Because it's a national recruitment program,
because you could get a job anywhere in the country you may have to move quite significant
distances in some cases in order to get that job that you want or get the experience that you want.
And that's particularly important for jobs where there is a lack of them in the core training
pathway. So certain specialties have very, very few number of jobs and you know if you're thinking
that that is the only specialty you want to do then it may mean you do have to relocate and
you have to move in order to gain access to that job. Particularly on your career where you may not
be settled, you may not have other commitments in the area this may be something you can easily do
however, later on it's something that becomes a bit more difficult and it may be something
that again impacts our decision. So I hope you found this video useful in terms of looking at
the advantages and disadvantages of doing dental core training. Like I said I think it's something
that's really important to consider when you're making your decision. In my opinion, the advantages
significantly outweigh the disadvantages from my two years that I did I gained a huge amount that
I don't think I would have gained if I went into practice. But everyone's different, your
requirements are different, your wants and needs are different and so consider what we've just been
through and see whether dental core training is for you. I will be doing separate videos on
the interview process and the application process along with some tips and tricks so keep a look out
for them. Please make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you can get informed
when these videos come out. So in every video I'm hoping to give you a recommendation that I think
you know will help in terms of educational resources. So in this first video my first
recommendation is the Protrusive Dental Podcast. Now this is a podcast run by one of my good
friends Jaz Gulati and he's been running it for a few years now and it's a phenomenal podcast.
Jaz is an excellent host and he's very relatable in terms of how he provides the content to you
and the guests that he has are world-renowned experts in their field so it means that every
time you listen to one of these podcasts you're going to gain some information. I'll put a link
to the podcast in the description below and you can get access to it on anywhere you listen to your
podcasts, so please make sure you check it out it's an excellent excellent resource that's definitely
going to further your education. So I hope this video has been useful like I said please like,
comment, subscribe and hit the notification bell it will help me it'll help me provide you more
videos and if there's any content that you're wanting please leave a comment below take care