Can't agree enough about dentistry.
Incredibly stressful on mind and body , doing microsurgery on a conscious patient to an exacting timescale as well as running a business , mentoring training staff and colleagues etc .
Funny how everyone has or knows a dentist who runs a Porsche and works two days a week , when every dentist I know works their socks off to detriment of health for less and less each year.
Vulture legal firms and patients looking to make big bucks when you are trying your very best but the smallest mistake can cost you everything .
General Dental Council out to get you for slightest mistake , often taking years for a hearing during which time you can't work but won't publish how many dentists commit suicide during this time.
Patients moaning about costs of treatment saying "well that's paying for your next holiday" . No it's paying for dentists £80,000 of student debt , the thousands of pounds a year in registration , indemnity ,regulation , cpd etc.
The fact that you cannot afford to be sick , you cannot afford to get pregnant , you have to pay your practice for days off .
The fact that after many decades in dentistry , many qualifications , I have never paid above above standard rate tax , despite the last decade being mostly private.
The very real thrills of the job , getting someone nervous through a course of treatment happily, rebuilding a shattered mouth , learning and using a new technique is massively outweighed by the British public and government outright hostility to a medical profession that works hard,efficiently and ethically but is held to far higher standards than virtually any other profession .
You are more likely to be sued in the U.K. as a dentist than in any other place in the world , we are thirty times more regulated than any other place in the world . Is it any wonder that more than 90% of dentists would not recommend the career to their children?
I am one of the last in my dental school year still working . Ill health, stress , death, bankruptcy and finally covid has done for most everyone else. Dentists were at the highest risk for covid , we had virtually no support and in my practice all the dentists had to keep on working as we had no virtually financial help despite all of us being high risk because of age, medical conditions etc. I lived in a caravan on my drive for 12 months to protect my loved ones.