Online education: Because its important to upgrade your skills!

Right from social networking to find and connect with friends, to reading the newspaper; or lately even buying the grocery, we are all logged in and “Online” for almost every single thing today. In the list of probably everything we do online one of the most important components that can and must be added is online education.

Dentistry is all about learning the basic science and theory, observing and practicing the skills and finally implementing it perfectly well on our patients. Some of you reading this article may be in the process of still graduating, some may have finished their education lately and some may be established practitioners, but one thing common for any of the above is that, at which ever state of our practice we are, we all need to upgrade our skills to a level up from where we are now in order to survive in the competition that is existing around all of us. Leaving our daily schedules aside and planning leaves may not be possible every time we want and thus the most feasible way in which we can learn and even upgrade our skills is by online education.

Dentistry similar to the medical practice now-a-days has become more of a specialty based practice where the trend of consultants is followed in almost every big city of our country, but it is extremely important for us to be aware and have some knowledge about everything in the field. In short the dentists should aim to be “Jack of all trades but master of ONE” unconventional to the previous saying. Also in becoming master of one trade we may lose the track of the other specialties. Online education is a simple and effective means to recapitulate our basics and also to revise our skills in all the dental specialties. Schematic flowcharts, high quality images, power point presentations and also online availability of comments by expertise in various dental specialties can be one of the most effective ways to learn the theoretical aspects, whereas high quality videos and lectures with demonstration of procedures on models and on patients can be one of the most effective ways to observe and learn the skills needed to do a particular procedure.

With our everyday practice at times we get stuck to what we learnt and continue practicing the same and we may be left behind if we fail to upgrade ourselves on any new procedures that may be trending outside our clinic boundaries. Not just the procedures even the instruments, materials and equipments are advancing and dentistry is taking new turns every day. Imagine the times before the advent of the rotary Endodontics, there are clinicians who may still be using the hand files just because they never upgraded to what is trending, or there may as well be clinicians who may plan for a three unit bridge in a missing tooth region where good height and width of bone for a dental implant may be available. By not upgrading our skills due to time constraints and busy schedule most of the times, we may put both ourselves and our patients at loss.

Online education can be one of the simplest and most effective ways to keep ourselves up with what’s trending in. It requires nothing more than just opening another tab in your laptop or even phone, so that by the time your friend types a reply to your message online, you may learn and plan a new procedure for the next day at your clinic. It’s simple “upgrade yourself in time or be left behind!”