In an ever changing landscape of moving goal posts and increasing pressures I wanted to talk about the stuff they don’t mention at dental school, or if they did I slept through it!

When you’re 18 you’re 10 foot tall and bullet proof, you just chose a vocational degree, job at the end, start on some decent coin.  Awesome, so as jobs go it has a high suicide rate – so what: “That’s other people, I won’t be that dentist.  I’m going to be the sports car driving, vacationing, loaded dentist; raking it in over my 40 + year career.  What could be stressful about that, I’m sorted!”

Hmm, oh to be a school leaver choosing your path in life.  Would I have chosen differently? No, this can be a great job. Have there been great times that are massively rewarding? Yes there sure have.  Have there been times where I haven’t slept with worry about work related issues? Where the pressures in this job have made it a massive effort to just get out of bed to show up? Yes, unfortunately yes.  It’s the latter that I feel we should be better prepared for, not just medico legally how to deal with complaints and conflict.  But how do we protect ourselves emotionally and physically from the daily stresses in our chosen career.  How do we maintain a balanced, happy, healthy career over that 40 or so years without burning out?  If we don’t look after ourselves then we can’t look after our patients/ careers, families  – the list goes on.

This blog is about trying to keep you away from bad backs, bad necks, the rsi and other occupational injuries.  Trying to keep you sane as you deal with blame, accusations, negative emotions, and money: always the money: theirs or yours. Because let’s face it you could be the perfect dentist but society has already cast you as the bad guy, and that can be hard to work against in the long term.