This is a rant.

Point of view of a woman, a dentist, who feels too passionately about her profession.

Dentistry is not easy. After a grueling 5 years of under graduation and 3 years of post-graduation, the first thing people tend to say is, “oh, so you’re not a ‘doctor’ doctor” (some add air commas for a dramatic effect. And we are so used to listening to these things that by the end of studying for so long we either smile quietly or walk away because deep down we know these digs just aren’t funny. Patients wait for hours to see their ophthalmologist or their gynecologists in private clinics or hospitals like Max or Apollo. Yet they will grumble if they have to wait for an extra 15 minutes at the dentists.

We do procedures with a drill that has almost 1lac rotations per minute in a structure smaller than the first digit of your finger, surrounded by higher vascular tissues like your cheeks and gums and the only organ is moves so freely – your tongue. All of this with the cameo appearance of saliva! We work on canals of teeth that are sometimes finer than your fancy bedsheet’s thread count yet when we finish the procedure, all the patients says towards the end with a head tilt and a laugh is, ‘thank God! I hope I never have to see you again’ (I am not generalizing, but this is 85% of the patients.

Somehow patients will buy Michael Korr bags and Gucci shoes and come to the clinic in a Fortuner, never bargain for a penny at any of the stores for the above stated things. However, tell them the cost of an implant or an extraction and suddenly they want to argue over a couple of hundred rupees.

Most dentists I know never charge their patient upfront, before even seeing them (unlike a lot of private neurology, cardiology or even physiotherapy clinics) and yet patients have a problem for paying a fee for consultation. And, no, this is not about money. This is about how dentists are perceived by the world at large, we are a ‘necessary evil’, even a slight mention of a dental visit is regarded unpleasantly by everyone. We work most holidays, don’t get the luxury of working remotely and constantly expose ourselves to infections, neck and back issues. Have I thought about quitting dentistry in the last 10 years that I have been studying and working in this field? Over a thousand times easily.

So why do we do it?

We do it for the 15% patients that get giddy with excitement, when they get a new smile. We do it for the adrenaline rush we get each time we manage to save a tooth, we do it for every child’s fear of a dental visit that we manage to convert. We do it for every old patient who is able to eat again after getting denture. We do it for every teenager who gets a boost of self-confidence after correcting their smiles with braces. We do it for the little moments of joys packed between long, frustrating days. Maybe we are really crazy to stick to it. If anyone asks me, whether they should do dentistry, I will probably say, ‘sure, but you have to be a little bit cracked to love it’

But that’s just my two cents.