Dentistry – The Course itself – The clinical years.

So you’ve got through what seems like a long slog of endless information, and you’ve sat your second year exams (they’re just before Easter), and passed, what’s on the other side? The best term, that’s what! The last term in second year is where you learn the basic clinical skills like drilling cavities and placing fillings. It’s a really fun and fairly laid back term, were you’ll practice on ‘phantom heads’ with fake jaws made up of real extracted (mostly clean) teeth. This is also the first time you’ll really interact with the clinicians, and find out they’re all really approachable and helpful.

The start of third year is when you’ll first start seeing patients, which is absolutely nerve wrecking! You’re thrown straight in at the deep end, getting your own, new patients, off the hospital’s waiting list, and these are then your patients to keep, plan, treat and manage, so you’re also a bit of your own secretary too.

Being thrown into it though is actually really beneficial, you’ll learn more being out of your comfort zone, you’ll adapt, enhance and refine your skills at a rapid pace, and although you may be shaking giving your first injection, (actually, you will be!), there will be a really helpful clinician there guiding you through it, and the patients are actually lovely, extremely grateful, and, excuse the pun, patient, after all, they’ve signed up for it and you’re helping them, which is extremely rewarding for you.

Over years 3, 4 and 5 you’ll continue to enhance and speed up your dentistry and knowledge, by having a mixture of clinical sessions with your own patients, undertaking aspects of dentistry such as dentures, gum disease and decay, as well as completing courses learning how to do root canal treatment and crowns, and even weeks each year on oral surgery extracting teeth, which is so much fun, and hand numbing! You’ll get stuck in in the labs too, learning and understanding how laboratories make dentures and crowns, and even making your own.

There are still lectures, only 3-4 a week, but they’re much more clinical based and seem more relevant, but when you get stuck into the human diseases course, easily the largest, all about medical conditions that patients may have that complicate treatment, you’ll appreciate all the effort you put in in the first 2 years as that was valuable baseline knowledge.

Written by 5th yr Dental student Will Holme.