At Dental School
It is important to think about your career from early on in your course.
There are various things you can do:
1. Think about specialties. There are quite a few dental specialties and although many dentists stay in general practice most tend to specialize in a particular area of practice.
Have a look at the specialty pages, but more importantly, speak to your clinical lecturers about their specialties including the training and the day to day work through one’s career.
2. Start filling up your CV. When you hit the job market and start applying for dental foundation positions, you will need to make your application stand out from the crowd. Just having a BDS may not be enough to get you the job you want in the location you want to live. A few ideas of things which look good are: Being an active member of a University society (preferably with a role, such as secretary, chairperson, treasurer etc). Volunteering looks good on a CV – the more involved you are and the more you do the better. Unfortunately, just putting “I enjoy socializing with my friends” in your interests section will not impress them enough.
3. Get some part time work. This will provide you with some very useful skills which you can bring to your future role as a dentist. Most jobs involve a few of the following skills – teamwork, communication skills, attention to detail, working under pressure, organizational skills, time management, meeting targets, interpersonal skills etc. Developing these transferable skills will help you when applying for jobs.
4. Think about intercalating. Although it is an extra year of study it can really help in your Dental Foundation applications and can be extremely rewarding and interesting. If you are interested in Academic Dentistry, then it is a definite plus.
5. Do an interesting elective. There is a lot of useful information on CE6 and also on the Barts and the London Dental society websites about electives.