Try explaining what an externship is, why you have to do it, why you have to go back for interview, pay for travel/lodging for all of these things. That after 8 years of paying for post-high school education you'll be paid beans for four years and you pay for two (or more), that med school is smack in the middle of your interrupted service years, that you do a year of general surgery.
The easiest thing to tell a med student, MD, or any skeptic is that all of these procedures were developed by mad-scientist dentists who pushed the envelope; that the history and nature of the development of the specialty inherently attracts the brightest and the craziest. OMFS does the most bat****-crazy surgeries in the hospital. You'll blindly saw through an IVRO with a runaway oscillating saw, put the patient in IMF for six weeks with ridiculous discomfort and post-op instructions, and it's all elective.
3rd and 4th year of dental school is a mini-residency where students have to actually produce, work, and manage often-difficult patients who come to you with the expectation that their experience is going to be terrible. Med school is advanced shadowing. Ask that med student if they'd give a **** about an ER resident's shelf score when they have a a facial lac. Ask them if they'd rather have a resident that knows how to give local, use a finger rest, and suture a conscious patient unhappy with their situation. Maybe they'll understand better.
This specialty is absurd. Screw perio amirite?
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
Gems from Med School as an OMFS resident
