Doctors

How Can Dentists Better Set Expectations About their Career Choices to Avoid Couples Therapy?

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Dentists these days are graduating with ever increasing amounts of debt as a result of loans needed to graduate from dental school. This topic has been covered before on this site such as in the post Will Dental School Debt Lead to Future Counseling?. Such debt may take a heavy toll on dentists and the patients they serve. One way debt from dental school can adversely impact a dentist is in his or her romantic relationships. This is touched on in the post Divorce and Dentistry: Repairing Broken Relationships. In this post one of the common contributors to divorce for dentists is their spouse not having clear expectations about work and finances. A new dentist may take many years of paying down debt before there is money left over for nice houses and fancy vacations. Perhaps if the spouse or … Read more

Divorce Among Dentists and Physicians: Is More Couples Therapy Needed?

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An interesting article titled “Divorce among physicians and other healthcare professionals in the United States: analysis of census survey data,” by Ly et al. appearing in BMJ (350: h706; 2015) discusses some rates of divorce among physicians and dentists compared with other professions in the United States of America. The authors were motivated to perform the work because it has been speculated that long hours and unpredictable work hours often worked by doctors leads to more divorces. In the study the authors looked at data by the US Census Bureau from 2008 to 2013. The data included age, sex, race, current marital status, occupation, annual income, and weekly hours usually worked. The authors included only those who were ages 25 or greater. Physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, lawyers, and healthcare executives were identified based on a self reported occupation. The sample included … Read more

Designing a Predoctoral Dental Curriculum To Help With Therapy Issues such as Stress Management and Suicide Prevention

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An interesting article titled “Tackling Stress Management, Addiction, and Suicide Prevention in a Predoctoral Dental Curriculum” by Brondani et al. appears in the Journal of Dental Education, vol. 78, no. 9, pp. 1286-1293, September, 2014. The article discusses many issues commonly dealt with in therapy such as stress management, addiction, and suicide prevention being incorporated into a predoctoral dental curriculum. The article discusses how a lot of research has been conducted over the years regarding ways for health professionals to cope with depression and stress. In such works, dentists have been singed out as among the most likely to experience severe stress, depression, and substance abuse. The article mentions how dentists are considered to have some of the highest rates of deliberate self-harm such as suicide among all health professionals. Reasons for suicide can often be a consequence of an … Read more

Divorce and Dentistry: Repairing Broken Relationships

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According to work by statistician Nathan Yau reported by Quartz who used divorce data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 5 year survey from 2015, dentists are the 13th least likely occupation to end in divorce among roughly 500 occupations. He found that roughly 22.5% of dentists who have been married at least once has ended in divorce. He also found that physicians and surgeons are just a hair better than dentists in keeping their marriage intact with roughly 21.8% of physicians and surgeons who have been married at least once has ended in divorce. Nathan observed that in general higher-salary professions tend to have lower divorce rates than lower-salary professions. Even so, a dentist being in a marriage having a 22.5% chance of ending in divorce is not very good odds. There are many things that a dentist can do … Read more

Delivering Sedation in Dentistry

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It has become increasing popular to deliver sedation to patients receiving dental work. Sedation is defined as the deliberate drug-induced depression of consciousness used to reduce anxiety and awareness associated with unpleasant medical procedures. Sedation is used to reduce anxiety.  In some cases dentists or oral surgeons deliver both the dental work and the sedation, while in others there is a separate anesthesiologist to do so. One should always verify proper training and license prior to undertaking any sedation from a healthcare professional. Sedation is generally considered very safe as long as it is performed by an appropriately trained practitioner in a monitored environment. Sedation dentistry uses different approaches depending on personal choice and comfort. In the order of increasing anesthesia these are local anesthesia, minimal sedation, nitrous oxide/oxygen, moderate (conscious) sedation, deep sedation, and general anesthesia. A more thorough discussion … Read more