After a long day of events today, I was finally home a while back. I prepared my tea, sat with my phone and I was just browsing through my Facebook page. Well, to my surprise at least three out of every ten posts on my page were about advertisements on “Skill enhancement courses in Dentistry”. Course by a certified specialist said one and hurry up for early bird registration said the other! With various permutation and combination, some offering free kits, to some providing a free lecture on Practice management, there is no stone that is left unturned for getting students to attend the skill enhancement programs!
This is being done by the same all of us from the dental fraternity, who otherwise regret the opening of too many private colleges which offer MDS seats, who otherwise sign petitions online for increasing the basic pay for dental graduates, and who otherwise realize that there is an overall fall in the quality of practice despite the rise in the number of dentists! Of course there are some excellent enhancement academies and centers by the experienced practitioners, which surely are the deserved ones and do well without the advertisements, but it’s appalling to see even those postgraduates who may have finished their exams just yesterday with a brochure and some ten unique things which their course may have to offer. Our signed petitions may make no sense at all if we continue to sell our skills like this. For instance, with thousand more people who are trained from somewhere or the other say in Periodontology, where do I stand despite my hard earned degree? Where Implantology needs training and precision, it’s a shame to see anyone and everyone placing and even teaching how to place Implants. The next big question is why do we start thinking about running academies, and selling our skills as soon as we graduate? Why do we give up so easily in trying to run a good team practice, with good shares for all the consultants, and providing good work to the patients! Perhaps because we know that there are rare emergencies in Dentistry, and so we practice and also teach less than what I would call as a good quality dentistry, failing to realize that though we don’t end up in emergencies we are ultimately creating chronic problems both for ourselves and our patients.
Complaining about increasing competition, and lesser pays and simultaneously running such academies which adds to the overall production of “Jack of all trades and masters of none dental surgeons” will lead us to a dead end one day! Wake up introspect, think what you are doing. By stopping such “skill for sale service” you may have to face a little struggle to set yourself up initially my dear dentist buddies, but, it will improve the overall status of the dental fraternity in our country gradually!
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