hi it's dr amanda with straightsmilesolutionstraightsmilesolutions.com
and today we're going to talk a little bit more about i'm going to be speaking to the dental
students out there about whether or not you should specialize and i'll give you my two cents worth
obviously i did a residency my residency was done at university of connecticut my dental school was
done at ucsf in san francisco um for me it was the right fit i knew coming straight into dental
school that if i was going to go in dental school i only want to do ortho that was the only thing
i was interested in so it was a no-brainer for me it was i wasn't interested at all really in
the general dental space phil's no restorative not my thing um and don't know you know um i slightly
considered pedo i still think that would have been a good fit for me but um i want to talk to you a
little bit more about you know the pros and cons obviously the ortho space has changed dramatically
in the last generation so would i still do it if it was now not sure that i would but i'm glad i
did it for me i think it's incredibly fascinating i love it as you know i make tons of content about
how much i love ortel all different types of art though i think it's life-changing it's fun
it's aesthetic it's the right fit for me but maybe not for you so let's talk a little bit more about
who you are so things that if i woulda coulda shoulda if it was today maybe i would have done
differently so obviously i went dental school in the late 90s um things were very different
you know than they are now so you don't learn that much in dental school you learn real basic stuff
what you're gonna learn honestly is when you graduate that first year or two so i do think
doing unless you have an awesome job lined up with a you know an owner dentist or a parent who owns
an office who's going to teach you and let you try things i think you should definitely consider
doing an agd or gpr depending on what you're more interested in definitely that's a great way to get
your skills up and do harder procedures i think that people who didn't do that then they're stuck
it's rough it's a rough world out there you know um same thing goes for people who specialize um i
really didn't learn that much in residency i mean i did a lot of work but in terms of real world
useful a lot of concepts and and understanding the basics and i understood it but in terms of
finding a useful way to do what i needed to do what i learned in residency was not useful at all
i basically had to relearn how to do everything once i got into practice because the techniques i
was taught were not sustainable you know in a high volume fast-paced practice patients were not going
to go for what the stuff we learned we learned how to do things with cantilevers and all kind of
springs and stuff like that and these are mouse traps and they're not gonna fly in an average
you know environment um things to think about i mean i learned the most probably in the one year
after i got out of residency i worked for the high volume dso it was hard work but you know i was
young i was 29 i was active i had a lot of energy i loved it and you know i could i could handle a
lot i saw a lot of work that was done that was bad you know that i had to fix i ended up being
the orthodontist that these companies sometimes would send me to offices when someone screwed
up and there was a lot of screw-ups i saw and i found ways to fix things in an efficient way i was
good at managing patients i was good at managing parents um you know it worked so i mean yeah that
first year out was the most useful i don't think you should go straight from residency to opening
your own practice i think that's a huge mistake i think i gained so much in those first year or
two just working in a clinic um an ortho clinic high volume eight chair seven chairs 100 120
patients a day yeah rough stuff you know but um you know you usually get compensated pretty well
and you will get your skills set up something good something really crazy you know um but yeah
i think that you know as a general dentist you can do everything as long as you do it
to the standard of care of a specialist i think that if you're 15 20 30 years down the road and
you're getting kind of tired of bread and butter general dynasty genistry it's a great idea to
get into a little bit more specialty work i see a lot of people getting into anesthesia
you know they get into doing maybe more endo being almost like a general dental a super
dentist you know is what they call them and there's always an opportunity to find
without even having to have your own practice if you don't want to to hop around to other people's
practices and do specialty work so definitely i see that happening i see a lot more of that um you
know i'm sure specialists don't love it but it's convenient and a lot of people want to keep their
patients in-house and i think even more than ever with covid patients really want to stay in-house
so um you know if you end up getting really good at something whether it's implants
sleep airway ortho you can definitely spin that off and you can do consulting as well you can
help people out who are doing it in-house who maybe don't have the time to attend all
kind of courses and a lot of times courses are just theoretical you're not actually learning
real world stuff and they focus often on certain techniques or systems which i think is a mistake
because you get really biased and it's not always the right thing there's not a one-size-fits-all
approach for every case you need to be open-minded and find the right product or system or technique
that's going to work for that patient if you're only sticking with a certain program that you know
makes their own type of thing it's going to not turn out that well and i've worked and seen enough
outcomes when this happens that i realize now that that's not the best idea and i'm not gonna name
names or anything like that but you need to be open-minded be willing to try different products
um and different techniques and find the best most effective technique for you your patient and your
office so hopefully that was helpful so yes i mean if you really but keep in mind also i mean
one other thing because we're kind of talking about ortho is one thing i never thought about
back in dental school um you know when i even considered specialization is how is especially
going to impact my life how is it going to impact the quality of my life how is it going
to impact my family life and i think you got to realize you know with especially with ortho and
it's changed like i said it used to be 20 years ago when i first was going into it um it was a
fully you know referral based especially it wasn't a problem people most general dentists
didn't do any ortho there was no invisalign when i first got started you know they they
send it all out they didn't want to deal with it they didn't know how to do brackets and wires
so you would get referrals like clockwork it was great right it just basically was feeding
you didn't have to do any marketing not really um it's totally changed so now you need to be a
pretty dynamic individual if you're going to have an ortho practice it takes a certain personality
to be that person high energy extroverted unless you're that person i don't think you should go
into ortho because you're gonna have to crazy be on social media crazy be fighting for your
patients it's not gonna be easy i can tell you that much so that's why i think growing your brand
um in dental school is super important and unless you're into that stuff don't do ortho
very aesthetic based um also keep in mind that with ortho now i mean there's a lot of virtual
stuff that you can you can set up your virtu your practice with a lot of virtual concepts and
i think that will really help but the most part especially if you're in a middle to upper income
area patients are not going to come in during the day they're going to come in after three or four
they're going to come in the evening they're going to want to come in on weekends and that's
just how it's gonna go so if you have your own kids and this is like i don't know why
i didn't think about this but if you have your own family school age kids how's that
gonna work for you you're never gonna see your kids and that's ultimately what i changed to
consulting after ten years so i was like forget this i only have my kids at home for 18 years
you know i already barely see them literally i get up in the morning they go off to school i by time
i get home from work they're asleep you know and i have to work on saturdays and repeat and it was
literally like these kids are growing up without their mom you know so i said forget this i'm done
you know there's no way you know if you live in maybe a small town where there's not that many
orthodontists well then they're gonna have to come in during the day so that might be
different but you live in a more urban area where there's already a lot of competition
forget it you have to be available on the after hours in order to do stuff and if you're not
you will never never survive as a specialist as an orthodontist which sees you know kids
and teens right for the most part unless you're fully making an adult only practice which for me
was like no thank you that's no fun it takes all the fun out of work though right and i
love working with kids and teens that's the best part of it so think about that because i didn't
and it kind of hit me in the face and it hit my family in the face and in my husband and face
and we were like this isn't working you know it wasn't what he wanted to do it wasn't what i
wanted that's why i transitioned into consulting and product development um and everything else
which has worked out fine for me and i've been very blessed but it may not work out for you
so think about that before you jump into ortho that's all i gotta say all right thanks so much