All you have to learn about is the teeth, right? And it’s the same length as medical school? Huh?
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medical school is not the full extent of training that medical doctors get, so thinking of medical school and dental school as the same thing is not entirely accurate. I don’t know if dentists do things like residencies but I doubt it to the same extent as medical doctors
Our mouths are one of our weakest points as humans, and we have a lot of them. Pulling or even filling a tooth wrong can leave you with a paralyzed face, or dead.
Because there are *alot* of different things going on in the mouth. Blood vessels, nasal passages, the skull, hosts of nerves, and of course the teeth.
And to be straight up: This is medical school. It is a very focus branch of medical school. The dentist is a licensed medical doctor.
On the flip side, dental school grads don’t do residency (outside of certain subspecialties) so while the school in both is 4 years, they are fully independent practitioners after 4 years while a medical school graduate is not.
“Only teeth”
The mouth is one of the most complex parts of the human body, that’s why dentistry is a completely separate field from the rest of medical care.
It’s the human body, so the basics like biochemistry, organic chemistry, microbiology etc. have to be learned. Typically medical school is 2 years didactic (classroom/lab) and 2 years in hospital clinic which i think is the same for dentistry. Med students then do internship/residencies and dentists can specialize as well. Typically medical post grad education is longer.
FWIW one of the guys who I went to medical school with had a brother who went to dental school at about the same time, and getting licensed as a dentist was a very very big deal and not easy at all. At that time (25 years ago) the majority failed their first attempt.
Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Pathology, Histology, Ethics, etc. The 1st and 2nd years are mostly academic. The 3rd and 4th years are more practical and working on real patients. On another note: As doctors, we prescribe medications. Medications are likely to interact with other medications, aside from other bodily functions. We are just as responsible for keeping patients healthy and “doing no harm” as physicians.
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Hello I am a licensed dentist. Very few people in this thread know what they’re talking about. The first two years of dental school cover didactic courses such as anatomy, pathology, biochemistry, and histology along with specialized courses unique to dentistry. Your second two years you spend performing work on live patients under the supervision of professors while also taking some classes. You graduate when you complete a required number of every procedure as well as pass state and national boards.
I know this is hard for people to wrap their head around because it’s “just teeth” but four years really only scratches the surface. I graduated two years ago and still learn new things every day.
To clarify some misinformation in this thread dentists are NOT medical doctors. These are separate schools although dentists might take classes with the medical students. We took anatomy and pathology together and other courses were taught by the same professors. I’d say dental school is harder but I’m biased 😉
The reason these are separate disciplines is purely historical and has nothing to do with the mouth being a unique part of the body in some way.
Please feel free to respond with questions
If dental school was shorter, more people would pursue it, jeopardizing wages for current dentists. As with most occupational regulations, it’s for gatekeeping.
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