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Starting out in the clinic can be a frustrating experiance.  Even after a year I still find that I am getting frustrated every now and then.  I imagine the frustration does not end after dental school or residency.  In many ways you are prepared to do dentistry, in many ways you are not.  At first it can be frustrating.  You are practicing for the first time a lot of different aspects of dentistry in a school setting.  Patient management, quality control vs. efficiency (ie: how can I do my very best in a short amount of time), and general knowledge about how to perform clinical dentistry are some things that come to mind. There are a few things to remember when you are in dental school that will decrease your frustrations.

• Remember that thousands of other dental students across the country graduate each year and EVERY single one of them at one time or another felt frustrated. “I am not going to graduate” “I will never get enough points” “This case is too hard” “I cannot stand scaling another quadrant” “All this debt…” ETC. Guess what? The majority of then DO graduate and are doing just fine.
• When a professor gets down on you for not knowing something don’t take it personally.  Brush it off as something you didn’t know, but now do, and the next time someone asks you will know.  No one ever remembered everything that was said in every class.  I like to think from the instructors point of view.  They have been teaching the same concept in the same dental school to the same kids for 15-35 years and are probably bored of repeating what the ferrule effect is or how to write a med consult.  It’s not personal.
• As long as you are doing your very best then why worry?  I have been getting very frustrated with my lack of anterior endo’s  I have not done a single root canal in dental school.  I have been in the clinics for almost an entire year.  I don’t know if it is bad luck, karma, or whatever but every case i bring to endo is either a referral, an extraction after caries control (non-restorable), or the tooth doesn’t need a root canal (the tooth had a PARL but ended up testing vital - cemento ossesous dysplasia, etc).  In the past two weeks I am 0 - 5 in trying to get an anterior endo…but I am doing my absolute best, no regrets when I fall asleep and this does wonders when trying to fight frustrations.
• Take a break.  Sit down, take a deep breath, get a snack and a drink, and make a list of everything on your to do list, and start to do them.  Writing things down in a list helps your brain organize everything you have to do and decreases the frustration of thinking you have a million things to do.  Sometimes when I do this I find out that my list is only 3 items long and I have been stressing out over nothing.
• When all else fails and you are at your brink, go volunteer in oral surgery and extract some teeth.  I find this to be very relaxing.  Maybe I am weird, but it works.

If you have anything that you find to be frustrating and something you do (don’t write “drink lots of alcohol”) please comment below.

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