to think it must be crap to be a dentist?

[SileneOliveira]

Had a filling this morning. Wasn't a pleasant experience. Is it ever.

So if you're a dentist, nobody's pleased to see you, everyone dreads their appointments, you spend your days peering into people's manky mouths.

Poor dentists.

I tell mine he's the second most unpopular person on the estate. The least popular being the traffic warden.

My dentist is lovely - really friendly, very gentle with treatment and very good at explaining what's happening. I dont mind going to see him at all

Don't dentists have one of the lowest life expectancy rates?

What BlueCornishPixie says is about average salary for UK NHS dentist. Considering the A level grades needed and the length of training & the difficult nature of the job, it's not that brilliant. Most dentists are motivated by helping people fortunately.

The most beautiful medical professional I’ve ever met (both physically and “handling very traumatised children” way) was a max fac doctor.

So dual qualified as a dentist and a doctor.

A lovely lovely guy I was at school with is the same.

I absolutely adore max fac people...

I don’t fancy it either and agree it must be depressing that people hate coming to see you but as others say the massive salary makes up for it. I also can’t imagine there’s much by way of taking work home!

Well paid I understand, but I cannot imagine it is much fun given how much people hate going.

Dentists, chiropodists and gynaecologists. Odd career choices one and all.

I.think being a chiropodist must be worse tbh all.those manky.feet?!my son goes to the special needs dentist she's ace will.happily crawl on the floor to check his teeth

Dentists, chiropodists and gynaecologists. Odd career choices one and all

We're Podiatrists now not chiropodists and yes we're collectively odd (Generalising a tad but you need a gallows sense of humour if you work with people's body parts !) .

I’m a dentist too.
It has good points and bad points. I wouldn’t choose it as a career if I had my time over.
The good is that it can be really satisfying. Today for example I extracted a tooth for a really nervous patient in pain. They looked terrified and left smiling. I did a Cerec which is where you make a crown or inlay in house. It fitted beautifully and looked really nice. Relieving pain or doing really nice work gives job satisfaction.
I build a relationship with my patients which I enjoy.
Mouths don’t worry me, even dirty- there are much worse bits that doctors have to look at!
The downside is it can be really stressful and has got more so as the threat of litigation has increased. I have bad anxiety which doesn’t help.
I work privately which means I don’t have to deal with the NHS fortunately. The current NHS contract is very difficult to work under. Sometimes my book goes quiet though so being self employed isn’t all rosy. I’m not sure I earn much more being private, I earn around £39k a year doing 3 days.

@70isalimitnotatarget I thought they wetter two different things? Apologies.

See? How do you do it? I'd need more than a gallows humor to be looking at people's feet all day. I'm pretty sure I would have developed some unhealthy addiction as a coping mechanism, probably food or alcohol...neither of which would help with the bending down to someone's feet task.

Respect.

I work in a dental practice - although at a different capacity (used to be a nurse) I'm now a pa (my boss lectures and I organise them)

It can be very creative, you get to do smile make overs and seeing patients so happy with the results. Most patients love the journey from before and after.

I know two vets who have retrained as dentists and love it. Hours and pay are so much better.

I had a lovely smiley dentist who used to do my check ups, then tell me to drink more cola and eat more sweets, he had a mortgage to pay

I don't actually mind going to the dentist, I've never dreaded an appointment ever. I really don't like that sharp pointy hook thing the hygienist uses to pick tartar off your teeth with, my toes are curling thinking about it. It's doing a good job though, so needs must...

Current dentists are lovely, nice and chatty. Previous one with the smiley dentist had really crap reception staff and they are the reason I changed dentists. No idea of customer relations at all

I have a few friends who are dentists in the nhs
It’s actually very poorly paid in the nhs and they are self employed so no sick pay or paid annual leave They say the nhs system is very difficult work under

Myusernameismud now I understand where all these dentists advertising Sensodyne come from!

There are loads of jobs much worse than dentist I think - working in a bank, teachers, other doctors , finance, accountants, i could go on. not to mention cleaners, waiters, etc. it depends what you like!

I'm a doctor and my mum always used to announce that she could never be a dentist as they're looking in people's mouths all day. She could never understand that I was often looking at much smellier orifices!! (Because of disease- not poor hygiene necessarily!)