<p>We should honestly have a Dental School section on this forum. I'm considering dental school because of the flexible hours with allows me to have more time with my family. Although being a doctor has more interesting fields of specialization such as plastic surgeons, cardiovascular, etc. I view dentistry as a specialization of being a doctor as well. Since I want to be a surgeon, I wouldn't mind operating with people that have diseased gums, or being an Orthodontist. What's your opinion about dental school relative to medical school and other fields? Would you say that job is boring or quite well?</p>
<p>Please if you know, where or what dental schools have a good repuation for placing their students in specialty programs such a Oral surgery or Orthondontics? THANK YOUOODUUU!</p>
<p>i agree with you RHSstudent. my reasons for choosing dentistry are very similar to yours. i want to go to UCLA for my undergrad degree, but if i dont get in then i will go to a cc close to home and try to transfer out either to UOP or UCLA. i heard that UOP has a good dental program. i would like to hear what other people think of it...any input would be great. thanks!</p>
<p>I too have decided to look into dentistry. Simply because, like you said, the hours are more flexibile than if you were a doctor.</p>
<p>My friend went to UOP for the 5 year dental program and he's going to be done this year. Boy did he have to work his butt off though, he had ideas of dropping out because he just couldn't handle it. And he was a smart kid, got like a 1500+ on his SAT. Kind of makes me worry, because I'm nowhere near as smart as him.</p>
<p>I know I'll probably just do my undergrad at a school in California if I ever do decide to become a dentist, but I really don't have a clue of any good dental schools. Does anyone have any suggestions?</p>
<p>wow that makes me kinda nervous too...lol
i heard that USC has a good dental program as well</p>
<p>University of Nebraska College of Denistry had 100% pass rate for step II of boards this year for the 3rd or 4th year in a row and an average score that placed them in the top 10 nationwide...probably a good start if you are looking for fellowship positions in ortho or another field.</p>
<p>I was actually debating between medicine and dentistry. Someone there that can tell me the advantage of being a Dentist over a Doctor. Would really like to know. I have always been keen on a career in medicine, but Does anyone here believe that being a doctor means not having a family. If there's a Doc in this forum, I would really like your opinion on that. :)
Thanks.</p>
<p>amoremia...i have the same questions</p>
<p>well..i was leaning towards dentistry more..since my parents are dentists..and would give me their offices once i became a dentist (they have 2 private practices) so the advantages 2 be a dentist are much more than to be a doctor (that's just me though)</p>
<p>i spoke to my doctor at Kaiser and i asked him for advice for med school. he told me he went to both dental school and med school. talk about AMAZING!!!! anyway, he didn't practice as a dentist, but as a doctor. His brother is a dentist, and he told me that he should've picked to practice as a dentist since his brother has soooo flexible hours and more possibilities to make more money. so yeah, my doctor, who is both a doctor and a dentist, told me to pursue dentistry. </p>
<p>kinda makes you guys think about dentistry now ey?</p>
<p>Yeah, well dentists have higher rates of suicide...so think about that!</p>
<p>What I'm getting at is that this is a highly personal decision and one must balance things like lifestyle, earnings, the nature of the work and so on. While I'm at times worried about the lifestyle of being a doctor, I'm willing to sacrifice somewhat for having more varied cases (or at least I hope so). Other people surely are willing to do a narrower scope of activities, for a calmer lifestyle and such.</p>
<p>lol tonichi</p>
<p>BRM..i know..my parents and all of their friends told me that already (dentistry is ranked 2nd highest rate of suicide)..lol</p>
<p>well...the saying that dentists have a higher rate of suicide, ok. but read this.</p>
<p>FROM THE SITE - <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010420.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010420.html</a></p>
<p>"Dear Cecil:</p>
<p>I've always heard that dentists have the highest suicide level of any of the medical professions, but I've never believed it. Is there any truth to it? --Terey Allen, Trenton, Michigan</p>
<p>Cecil replies:</p>
<p>This is one of those dodgy things that "everybody knows." And not just the uninformed public, either--dentists themselves believe it. Since the 1960s dental journals have been carrying articles with headlines like "The Suicidal Professions."</p>
<p>Dozens of studies have looked at suicide not only among dentists but among health-care workers in general. With few exceptions, research over the past 40 years has found that dentists (and doctors) take their own lives at a higher-than-average rate. But how much higher? To hear some tell it, you'd better not leave these guys in a room alone.</p>
<p>Dentists' odds of suicide "are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population," writes researcher Steven Stack. "Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and have strained relationships with their clients--few people enjoy going to the dentist."</p>
<p>One study of Oregon dentists found that they had the highest suicide rate of any group investigated. A California study found that dentists were surpassed only by chemists and pharmacists. Of 22 occupations examined in Washington state, dentists had a suicide rate second only to that of sheepherders and wool workers.</p>
<p>But the sheer diversity of results has to make you suspicious. I mean, which is it--dentists, chemists and pharmacists, or sheepherders and wool workers? (What, the bleating gets to them?) And what about psychiatrists? One school of popular belief holds that they have the highest suicide rate.</p>
<p>Read the studies and you begin to see the problem. Suicide research is inherently a little flaky, in part because suicides are often concealed. Equally important from a statistical standpoint is the problem of small numbers: dentists represent only a small fraction of the total population, only a small fraction of them die in a given year, and only a small fraction of those that die are suicides.</p>
<p>So you've got people drawing grand conclusions based on tiny samples. For example, I see where the Swedes think their male dentists have an elevated suicide rate. Number of male-dentist suicides on which this finding is based: 18.</p>
<p>But you aren't reading this column to hear me whine about the crummy data. You want the facts. Coming right up. All we need to do, for any occupation of interest, is (a) find a large, reasonably accurate source of mortality statistics, (b) compute suicides as a percentage of total deaths for said group, and (c) compare that percentage with some benchmark, like so:</p>
<p>PERCENTAGE OF DEATHS DUE TO SUICIDE</p>
<p>U.S. white male population 25 and older (1970): 1.5</p>
<p>U.S. white male dentists (1968-72): 2.0 (85 of 4,190)</p>
<p>U.S. white male medical doctors (1967-72): 3.0 (544 of 17,979)</p>
<p>U.S. white male population 25 and older (1990): 2.0</p>
<p>U.S. white male medical doctors (1984-95): 2.7 (379 of 13,790)</p>
<p>(Sources: Vital Statistics of the United States--1970, National Center for Health Statistics, Table 1-26, "Deaths from 281 Selected Causes, by Age, Race, and Sex: United States, 1970"; death certificates from 31 states, reported in "Mortality of Dentists, 1968 to 1972," Bureau of Economic Research and Statistics, Journal of the American Dental Association, January 1975, pp. 195ff; death reports collected by the American Medical Association, reported in "Suicide by Psychiatrists: A Study of Medical Specialists Among 18,730 Physician Deaths During a Five-Year Period, 1967-72," Rich et al., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, August 1980, pp. 261ff.; Vital Statistics of the United States--1990, National Center for Health Statistics, Table 1-27, "Deaths from 282 Selected Causes, by 5-Year Age Groups, Race, and Sex: United States--1990"; National Occupational Mortality Surveillance database, reported in "Mortality Rates and Causes Among U.S. Physicians," Frank et al., American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2000.</p>
<p>I know what you're thinking. Percentages! They're so primitive! What about the Poisson distribution, the chi-square test, the multivariate regression analysis? Not to mention the fact that I don't express suicides relative to 100,000 living population; that I haven't corrected for age distribution, socioeconomic status, etc; and that I couldn't find any current data for dentist mortality in the readily available literature. Sue me. We've got enough here to draw some basic conclusions.</p>
<p>Suicide among white male American dentists is higher than average but not as high as among white male American doctors. (Sorry to limit this to white men, but that's all the data I had to work with.) Don't fret, though. Dentists' death rates from other causes are lower, and on average they live several years longer than the general population. Ditto for doctors.</p>
<p>What's the most suicidal occupation? I won't venture an opinion for the world of work overall, but among health-care types it may well be shrinks. In a study of 18,730 physician deaths from 1967 to 1972 (men and women), psychiatrists accounted for 7 percent of the total but 12 percent of the 593 suicides (source: Rich et al., cited above).</p>
<p>Even more alarming is the rate of suicide among female doctors. A recent study found that 3.6 percent of white female doctors' deaths were suicides--higher than the rate for male doctors and many times the average for U.S. women (0.5 percent for 1990; source: Frank et al., cited above; Vital Statistics of the United States--1990). Women have entered medicine in huge numbers in recent decades, but progress has come at a price."</p>
<p>there you go.</p>
<p>and also.. from this website -<a href="http://www.friendsforsurvival.org/new_page_2.htm">http://www.friendsforsurvival.org/new_page_2.htm</a></p>
<p>"
Fable: Professional people do not commit suicide.
Fact: There are high suicide rates among physicians, dentists, pharmacists and
lawyers. Contrary to another fable, dentist do not have the highest suicide rate among professionals."</p>
<p>woah, thanks for the info t0n1ch1!!</p>
<p>haha. no problemo</p>