I see it more and more now, “I want to quit. I just don’t think it’s for me.” It’s heartbreaking. More so because I know exactly how it feels.
You finish what feels like a lifetime of study simply to acquire your degree, you turn the corner and waiting for you are a hundred voices telling you that far from having “made it”, you’re at the bottom again and in order to every be respected or successful, you must eat, breathe and sleep your profession.
The feeling of wanting to quit dentistry is a common sentiment among many dental professionals. But what if it’s not the career and the work itself that’s the problem? What if, it’s actually the environment you’re in?
So many of us have “side-hustles” that we consider taking on as full time work, purely because we’re tired of carrying the burden of the clinical environment on our shoulders. But what if we could learn to find our passion for the profession again, not through doing more of it, but through creating an environment that is aligned with our personal values and allows us to help more people in better ways simply by breaking the current mould we have for what it means to “be a dentist”?
1. Understanding the Root Cause: It’s Not Dentistry, It’s the Environment
Most dentists enter the profession with a caring desire to help people. But the pressure from colleagues, from businesses, from patients, to do more, be more involved and wrapped up in something which is described as a “career” and not a job, can be hard. Being someone who wants to care for others and do a good job, lends itself to the career pathway, but it can backfire. It means we struggle to stand up for ourselves, to say no to unreasonable requests and essentially leads to the sacrifice of your own freedom in the pursuit of people pleasing.
But that’s not how your career needs to be! That’s the specific environment you’re in – and that CAN CHANGE.
2. Charting a New Course in Your Dental Career
Remember, you are (in most cases) a self-employed individual in charge of your own path!
“If you are unhappy, you are not a tree – MOVE!”
If you’re somewhere feeling unfulfilled, undervalued, if it just doesn’t feel like it fits, look for a new position! There are so many different dental teams an opportunities out there for you. What you need to remember is, you are looking for a team that wants to put in as much as you do: Never make the mistake of feeling you are irreplaceable, but do know your worth. It’s a two-way street. You want to find a team that wants to grow, that embraces your ideas and welcomes your voice in the discussion, one where you feel comfortable about changing for the better and where you feel excited for the present and the future.
3. Creating a Portfolio Career Beyond Traditional Dentistry
By the time most dentists with these “get out” feelings have got to me, they’re already starting to think about the other skills they have, or want to develop outside of dentistry, to help them gather a new challenge and reignite the passion they once felt in their current job role. But rather than focusing on this as a way to get out, what if we focused on it as a brilliant way to diversify? People who tell you you can’t be a brilliant dentist if you’re doing something else as well, are quite frankly, wrong. Because your profession isn’t about being immersed inside of it 24/7, it’s about learning how to help people with the unique set of skills that you have, inside AND outside of dentistry.
Portfolio careers help you stay interested, excited, motivated and more importantly, pass that passion on to the people you encounter that you can help.
4. Take Time Out from Dentistry!
It’s changed since the people at the top, were at the start. They set a precedent based on a different world. And now, that world is full of so much extra paperwork, litigation, pressures from patients and practice teams, bigger corporates. There is so much more to consider. We already have such a burden to carry, that actually, one thing that is totally undervalued in our profession is DOWN TIME.
We’re surrounded by people standing at the top of the tree, telling us the only way to be successful is staying up late into the night reading academic articles and watching webinar recordings on best bonding techniques. And CPD and learning is all a fantastic bonus of our profession – the opportunity to be part of a fast-paced developing profession – but it doesn’t mean you need to be eating, sleeping and breathing dentistry. You need to build a life that helps you MAINTAIN the passion, not one that kills it through continuous over-immersion – otherwise known as drowning…