Category: Dentistry Development

Trends And Developments In Dentistry

In dentistry, methods change relatively frequently and quickly. The use of new technologies and adhesives ensures greater efficiency here.

Holistic dentistry is also being used more and more frequently. Biocompatible dentures with particularly favorable properties for the body play just as much a role here as the connection of teeth with other parts of the body through the nerve pathways. Laser technology replaces the drill, for example. Or ceramic inlays can be produced directly in the practice in a few minutes.

Financing and the German health system are constantly presenting the self-employed dentists with new hurdles. The acquisition of new equipment requires expensive investments that have to pay off again. Health insurers cut services and patients now have to pay themselves, for dentists this means that they have to do persuasive work.

Typical Industries

Dentists primarily find employment

• in dental offices and dental clinics

They also find employment

• in medical research and teaching
• in the pharmaceutical industry
• at health authorities, health insurance companies and dentists’ associations

The Daily Routine As A Dentist

The daily routine as a dentist depends on whether you work in a clinic, research or practice. For example, the working day of a resident dentist looks like this:

07:30 am

Arrival at your practice: You discuss the course of the day with your employees.

8:00 a.m.

Your practice opens and the first patients are already at the door. The 9-year-old Maximilian is very afraid of the dentist. With your calm and empathetic manner you take him with you into the treatment room. After half an hour he has already made it. Since his teeth are fine, the dental assistant only showed him once more how to brush his teeth properly.

8:30 a.m.

Several check-ups follow. You remove tartar from the teeth of all patients. Some also suffer from tooth decay. Since you cannot perform these treatments on the same day due to lack of time, your assistants will make new appointments for them.

13:00 ‘O clock

During the lunch break you have time to have a bite to eat and to prepare for work in the afternoon. A root canal treatment is about to take place with Ms. Müller.

14:00 clock

Ms. Müller comes into your treatment room with trembling knees. You chat a little and you explain your approach to her. You perform the root canal treatment with the help of local anesthesia.

3:15 p.m.

The next check-up is due. Mr. Schneider is already waiting for you. He would like to have a local anesthetic for his caries treatment so that he does not feel any pain.

5:45 p.m.

The last appointment for today: The goal is a crunch for Mr. Lau. To do this, you make an impression of his teeth. To adjust the finished splint, Mr. Lau will make another appointment with your assistant.

6:10 p.m.

The practice closes. You do the administrative tasks that were left behind and sign prescriptions. Then you go into the evening.

Dentists – Who Doesn’t Know Them? 

Dentists – as the name suggests – deal with teeth and belong to the so-called human medical field. In addition to routine tasks such as treating incoming patients, pain patients must also be treated, who often come to the practice without an appointment and want to be relieved of their toothache. Dentists examine patients, make findings, diagnose tooth, mouth and jaw diseases including anomalies in the position of the teeth, determine therapeutic measures and carry out dental treatments and interventions.

Do You Know Exactly What An Employed Dentist Actually Does?

Daily tasks include activities such as prevention, treatment and aftercare of the oral and dental areas. The tasks of a dentist include not only the teeth, but also, for example, the jaw or the gums. However, different tasks also come about with different patients. The age structure in particular is a decisive factor.

While the focus of children and young patients is mainly on tooth care and prevention, an employed dentist has to meet significantly higher standards for patients with increasing age. Basically, a dentist not only reacts to short-term problems, but also acts preventively with foresight in order to protect patients from future harm. To do this, it may be necessary, for example, to replace a tooth completely or in part.

Furthermore, the dentist vacancies can not only call for the “general” dentist, but lead to further specializations. These specializations can therefore be in the direction of periodontology or facial epithetics. In this respect, the field of duties of a dentist can be broad or restricted to a certain field through specialization.

The Doctor Is Trusted, Not The Seller

It is not for nothing that the professional code of dentists explicitly states “Dentistry is not a trade”, because only if the patient can assume that he is going to a doctor and not to a salesman will he trust this doctor and his advice. And yet modern dentistry runs the risk of increasingly becoming a business.

Ethics In Dentistry

It Got The Following Order Of Descending Priority:

• life and health of the patient
• adequate and painless functioning of the chewing apparatus
• patient autonomy
• preferred treatment strategies of the individual dentist and the dental profession as a whole
• aesthetic values
• cost of treatment for the patient
• external factors, from the patient’s lifestyle to problems of distributive justice when resources are scarce.

The list of priorities described provides an impressive example of the fact that such decisions are largely dependent on the respective social and cultural context. In liberal social systems, patient autonomy is likely to be weighted more heavily than in communitarian ones; The assessment and classification of financial aspects also depends on the economic framework and the proportion of people with compulsory insurance.

In particular, application-related (i.e. clinically-oriented) engagement with dental ethics should – in analogy to medicine – have the following six goals in mind 

• the sensitization for the relevant question in dentistry,
• the motivation of dentists to examine the everyday working life for prevailing values,
• the development of one’s own moral attitude,
• the development of the competence to judge ethical problem cases in a differentiated manner and to do so discuss,
• imparting skills and abilities in the field of ethics and
• their implementation in practical work.