Dentist
Melissa is a dentist at a private clinic where she fixes teeth to reduce pain and give people the confidence to smile. It’s a lot more than just looking into people’s mouths all day.
What a Dentist does
I check, clean and treat a patient’s teeth. I’ll do fillings or take out teeth if people are in pain. It’s a lot of hands-on work and talking to patients.
General dentistry encompasses a lot, for example, basic check ups, cleans, cosmetic treatment, crowns, bridges, root canal treatment, extractions, whitening and veneers so that’s porcelain facings that go over the top of your teeth to modify their appearance. If you have a really small tooth behind your teeth, a veneer can make it look bigger and in-line with your other teeth.
At the moment, I mostly do basic dental treatment and anything that’s more advanced like wisdom teeth construction which needs more complicated surgery, I’ll refer to someone else.
Trying physiotherapy first
I studied physiotherapy for a year because it was one of my first preferences after medicine. After a year of studying, I didn’t enjoy it and realised how I’d get sick of prescribing exercises or massaging people and it just felt limiting to me. Of course, there’s a lot more that physiotherapists do but it wasn’t for me.
Choosing dentistry over other health jobs
I’ve always been interested in healthcare because I like helping people and talking to them. I wanted to study medicine but I didn’t get in and got an offer from dentistry instead so I thought it’d be similar besides the fact that I’d be treating teeth so decided to go for it.
As a dentist you can call your own shots and be involved in the entirety of the patient care process from diagnosis to treatment. You get to complete the whole course of treatment but in a lot of other healthcare roles, you’re involved in just one aspect which means you have to liaise with a lot of healthcare professionals or you’re under the direction of someone else. Of course, in dentistry you liaise with specialists but when I was learning about it, it seemed like I’d become a lot more involved with patient care.
You can become a lot more specialised as well and career progression and advancement are highly encouraged in dentistry. It’s broad so you could do cosmetic dentistry, braces, orthodontics, or go into surgery and do implants. It just seemed like dentistry could open a lot of doors compared to other roles in health.
What medicine has that dentistry doesn’t
I’m still trying to pursue medicine because it involves a lot more talking, analysing and diagnosing and I’m studying for the GAMSAT (Graduate Medical School Admissions Test). Not to say that dentistry doesn’t involve all that but there’s only two main diseases that I’d be treating which are gum disease or decay causing pain. I like diagnosing and thinking about how to fix problems and want a broader range of challenges to take on.
I enjoy chatting to patients, explaining to them what’s going on—that’s the part I like the most but unfortunately, in dentistry that’s just a small part of the job. I can talk and explain to them as much as I want but in the end, most of it is treatment which I still enjoy but not to the point where I’d want to be doing it for years. I just feel like medicine would be more meaningful to me as cliché as that may sound.
”When people think of dentistry, they don’t really think it’s creative but a lot of restoration work requires some level of creativity. For example, if patients have broken teeth and they want them to be restored, I design and model their mouth with my hands so I have to take into account of things like what their face looks like, how their teeth are aligned or their bite and to ensure it’s comfortable.”
What you wouldn’t normally see a dentist do
Behind the scenes, I do lab work where there is a lot of planning and studying involved. For example, I had a patient come in for veneers which I had to model and wax up. Wax up is when you make a model of what you want the veneers to look like in the mouth and you make it out of wax and so I’ll do that and plan it first, then create a mould that I can recreate on the patient.
A lot of people don’t realise how much comforting dentists have to do. I have patients who come to me and cry a lot and are worried and scared. Most people they just come for a checkup but are really nervous. So many patients cry and try to walk out the door. Being patient and able to comfort others are valuable skills as a dentist.
I think something all dentists can relate to is that nobody opens their mouth wide enough. I constantly and politely have to remind patients to open their mouth wider and two seconds later they close it again.
Art + Science
Someone who is creative and thinks outside the box can thrive as a dentist. When people think of dentistry, they don’t really think it’s creative but a lot of restoration work requires some level of creativity. For example, if patients have broken teeth and they want them to be restored, I design and model their mouth with my hands so I have to take into account of things like what their face looks like, how their teeth are aligned or their bite and to ensure it’s comfortable. You have to be creative because a tooth or filling is like a sculpture. It sounds like an exaggeration but you’re recreating a tooth and making sure it fits in with the rest of someone’s smile so that’s the most obvious way that it’s creative.
Even other things like taking out a tooth, it’s not creative but thinking outside the box and thinking about how to solve problems and approaching it in a different way because teeth don’t always come out the same way and every tooth is different and I have to approach it in different ways. Some teeth are curved while others may be decayed and blocking another tooth’s path. There is an art to it in some way or another.
“Maybe you’ve failed in something on one day but it doesn’t mean you are a failure.“
When patients express gratitude
It is definitely rewarding when a patient is appreciative of your work. You feel like you’ve really helped them so for example, when I was fixing a patient’s mouth, she told me that she found herself smiling a lot more now that her teeth were straighter. After I did the veneers she told me she felt more confident and smiled a lot more instead of hiding her smile. To me that’s really worth it and when patients are grateful that you’ve gotten them out of pain or they were really worried about something but it turned out to be painless and quicker than expected. A patient hugged me today. I would not have expected it but they told me it was the best tooth extraction they’d ever had and gave me a hug.
Advice to her younger self
Don’t take anything personally when you receive feedback. When patients, supervisors or teachers say things or you get a bad mark, it’s not always a reflection of you and your abilities. Since I have a Type A personality, I have a tendency to want everything I do to be perfect. You’re going to mess up and people will be critical of you and your work. People aren’t always going to be nice and you won’t always get along with everyone so I think developing resilience and knowing your worth is an important lesson I’ve learned overtime. Maybe you’ve failed in something on one day but it doesn’t mean you are a failure.