How to Develop Your Career in Dentistry

Janine Brooks

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781118913819
• eBook ISBN: 9781118913796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Dentistry

This innovative new book offers a user-friendly guide to securing a successful, varied, and fulfilling career in dentistry.

• Includes case studies of career trajectories across the full range of dental professions in the UK
• Advocates a portfolio approach to career development, illustrating the benefits of working in a matrix as opposed to climbing a ladder
• Showcases the opportunities inherent in specific areas of dentistry, what they can offer and what is required to successfully take advantage of them
• Written by one of the UK's leading dental experts who has over 30 years in the profession, working on the local and national scale

Chapter 1
Introduction

---

Top Tip: Don't be afraid to tack – take the nonlinear path

Janine Brooks

---

Welcome to my book on How to Develop your Career in Dentistry. I hope you find it interesting and useful. I hope it makes you think about your career and encourages you to dip your toes into an exciting world of diversity and opportunity.

The approach I want to take is that our careers can be multistranded: I'm calling that having a ‘portfolio career’. In addition, I want to get you to think about the context in which we provide dentistry, our Society. Chapter 2 covers changes happening within society that will impact on dental professionals and the career choices they make. These include changes to retirement and pensions, as well as demographic changes, particularly in health and longevity, both of our patients and of us dental professionals. Chapter 3 discusses dental opportunities; here I will be giving you a taster of the many roles and responsibilities that dental professionals take on. Chapter 4 is about mentoring and coaching, both of which I feel are essential support for dental professionals seeking development and career enhancement. Chapter 5 I have dedicated to case studies. I have been fortunate in persuading a number of dental professionals to share their career stories with me and to allow me to include them in this book. I feel this is the heart of the book, as it showcases the breadth and depth of dental professionals' talents. Chapter 6 covers networking and networks: again, in my opinion, essential to a successful career. Finally, Chapter 7 discusses training and the qualifications you may want to think about when enriching your career and expanding what you do. Throughout the book, I have sprinkled Top Tips – both my own and those of other professionals. Feel free to give them a go. They may not all work for you, but some will. I have also sprinkled Career Highlights from a number of contributors throughout the chapters. To me, they demonstrate that dentistry is very rewarding and that, even if we struggle and find the demands of others a challenge, there is plenty of light and plenty of rewards to keep us going.

The self is not something ready made, but something in continuous formation, through choice of action.

Dewey (1916)

I really like this quote from Dewey. When he wrote it, he was thinking about reflection, but I feel it is very relevant to making choices and building a career. Opportunities may arise unexpectedly and unplanned, and often from the strangest direction, but it is our choice what action we take – no one else's. Take control, be the architect of your career. This may mean taking a few ‘risks’, maybe doing something for free. Make it part of your plan to be more opportunistic. If you learn to translate what you see, hear and do into your career, you might be surprised by the shape it takes on.

---

Career Highlight: Voluntary work abroad

Reena Patel

---

Another important aspect of the Dewey quote for me is the word ‘continuous’. Our careers should be continuous, growing, expanding, evolving, not static or stale. In dentistry, we are fortunate in being part of a profession that has a rich diversity of jobs and roles. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying there won't be strong competition for some of the jobs you want, but you worked hard to enter the profession – that you need to work hard to build your career should not be a surprise.

Our career takes up a large proportion of our middle life – that's the life between leaving school (largely childhood) and retiring (largely older age). It obviously varies from person to person, but as a very rough estimate you will spend a minimum of 2775 full days (24 hours of each day – no sleeping) or 66 600 hours working. That will hold if the following are true:

• You leave school at 18 years.
• You spend 5 years training in your primary qualification.
• You retire at 60 years of age.
• You work 5 days a week, and take no time off for your family.
• You take 6 weeks' annual leave each year.
• You are sick for 5 days each year.

As you can see, this is a very rough estimate, based on variables that have considerable range. If you start work earlier, have less training time, retire earlier or later, work part time or take time off to raise your family, have less annual leave and are particularly healthy then you will spend even longer in your career. It's very likely most people reading this book will not retire at 60 years of age.

The real point I'm making here is that you will spend a considerable amount of your life working in your career. I guess that doesn't come as a surprise. What might, though, is exactly how much time it is. Until you really think about it, you probably just consider it ‘a lot’. So, if you are going to spend ‘a lot’ of your life tending to your career then the least you can do for yourself is make choices that you will enjoy and find fulfilling and satisfying. The good news is that the profession of dentistry can offer exactly that, plus a good remuneration – maybe not the best, but good nonetheless. Of course, you may be looking for a c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Demography and society in the United Kingdom
• Chapter 3: Dental opportunities
• Chapter 4: Coaching and mentoring
• Chapter 5: Case studies of dental professionals
• Chapter 6: Networking and networks
• Chapter 7: Training and qualifications
• Index
• End User License Agreement