©2013 Special Care Dentistry Association and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DOI: 10.1111/scd.12012

E D I T O R I A L

Spec Care Dent is t 33(2 ) 2013 47

First Impressions: How to “Wow” Students into Special Care Dentists

Now is the time of year when senior dental students have just received the results of the match for general practice, oral and maxillofacial surgery and pedi-atric dentistry residencies. The match for orthodontic residency programs occurred a few months ago. For those students who elected not to pursue a continuation of their formal dental education, a fast and furious search is on for general practice opportunities. At the same time, postdoctoral dental residents are finishing their respective programs and are searching for their best practice opportunity. Each year, I randomly sample some senior dental students and postdoctoral residents at my home institution and at meetings around the country in order to get a sense for what has driven their career choices.

Dental students and residents today are overwhelmingly in a state of panic about how much debt they have incurred thus far in their educational track and are increasingly preoccupied with how they are going to pay it back. For some, the choice to specialize is being driven by the hope that the future income of a specialist would continue to be greater than that of a general practitioner and would ease the

burden of debt repayment. For others, the choice is a far more practical one. If one needs to balance their time between family life and professional life, some dental specialties lend them-selves far better to part-time practice than general practice. However, for some graduates, career decisions are not about specialization or general practice but are all about their first “wow” experience with dentistry.

Over the years I have interviewed quite a few applicants for dental school and residency positions. One of the first interview questions that I always pose to a candidate is, “when were you first bitten by the dental bug?” As you can imagine, the variety of answers to this question have been enormous. Yet, the common thread among applicants is that they encountered some dentist who had a tremendous “wow” factor. That is to say, something about that dentist resonated with them and made them want to pursue a similar career. In some instances, it was some superficial detail or materialistic possession that shaped the first impression and elicited the “wow”. In other instances, it was the professionalism or caring demonstrated by that dentist that produced the “wow”.

Of course, not all of us can afford to drive Porsche convertibles and not all of us are endowed with the professional demeanor of Albert Schweitzer. So how do you “wow” a student into becoming a special care dentist?

First impressions are lasting ones. I cannot tell you how many lectures that I have attended on special care in dentistry when the lecturer has either apologized for the “dryness” of their topic or has stated that “working on these patients is not glamorous and you don't get paid what you deserve”. Indeed both of these admissions may contain some elements of truth but in the long run they don't really achieve the intended result for those who utter them. In order to “wow” students into pursuing special care in some aspect of dentistry, we must stimulate a genuine connection with them. Once that connection is established, then a mentorship opportunity is only a matter of time and a little effort.

Marc Bernard Ackerman , DMD, MBA, FACD Boston , Massachusetts

Spec Care Dentist 33(2): 47, 2013

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