“In India, it is believed that Dentistry is neither the sorted or the most sought-after career. The top and the highest search content of social media makes a young dental undergrad feel dicey about his work and career choices. Approximately, 40% dental surgeon quit their job or choose alternate career option due to the huge impending pressure on them, running family, making up chamber electricity bills from their pockets. The highest search question on Quora said, “should a woman continue dentistry after marriage?”
Well, sadly enough they all say, it’s because of lack of patients, saturation, competition and unreliability of the stake. Statistically there is only one dental surgeon for every 5000 Indian Citizen, then how does the insufficient patient number stands?
Now the table turns and being a Dental Surgeon myself, I felt there is cut throat competition among all the dental surgeons. Well, that is healthy only if that encourages mutual growth, but in our case it’s like the story of a dozen crabs in bucket. Even if a crab tries to escape out, other 5 will pull them back in. So, the Dental Community needs to be uplifted and each one of us should upgrade ourselves with more skill and precision. Instead, we kept blaming. Now as a result, Patients (Consumers of the Market) took dental surgeon very lightly. They will give silly excuses to us but not to a NonDental Specialist, Why? Lack of awareness and trust because they see the same frustration in our face every time, in their family dentist, family dental UG student etc.
Secondly, the abnormal decentralized dental treatment pricing, now this may sound demeaning to Dentist but let me tell you, for this very reason, dentist face acute shortage of patients at times and then they post in social media, “50% discount on scaling for Independence Day, First 10 patient will get their X Ray free” Now a patient starts comparing the dental service to a Sunday Bazaar Showroom with Discounts or maybe a Wholesale market. As a result, Dentistry degraded once again.
So, this doesn’t happen if there is a uniform pricing. Now if everybody maintains a consistent average, where will the patient go? So, 1000s like him/her will turn up for dental treatment and then the Industry will flow. Now the settlement is like the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer.
Lastly, Basic syllabus completion and Textbook Reading will certainly fetch you a degree certificate but will not make you compatible Dental Surgeon to handle cases independently. So even if a student after feeding with 20 lakh to 30 lakh as Course Fee tries to learn something from outside, he/she will definitely take a stand back because of steep Conference and Corse Fees with Handson
A doctor training a doctor ideally should charge something as GuruDakshina bare minimum what is required. Belonging from a middle class family, I still remember how I gathered the exploited rates of internship stipend which is even less than a Rickshaw driver daily on the roads of Kolkata to feed for learning a Dental Procedure from outside.
Dentogenesis started it’s baby steps from 2020 solving these problems and will continue to do so till there will be a day when a Indian Family will themselves say My Ward “chose” Dentistry and not “got’ Dentistry due to low marks in entrance. Make Dentistry a choice not your last option. It is in itself a specialized fraternity dealing with one of the most sensitive part of the human body. Ladies and Gentlemen, Make dentistry is a career of choice not a career by chance!
Dr. Rajdeep Samaddar
Founder CEO
Dentogenesis Group
A dentist for a dentist
Official website – dentogenesis.co.in
