All you have to learn about is the teeth, right? And it’s the same length as medical school? Huh?
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In Sweden it is 5 years 🤓
I like to think of dentristry as its own sub specialty of medicine. We just cut straight to it and by doing so lack in some other general medicine areas.
Honestly, the bigger question is why dentistry isn’t simply a medical discipline rather than its own parallel branch of study. There are historical reasons related to how they each developed.
Ultimately, in order to do dentistry properly, you have to gain a lot of the same knowledge a doctor does plus a bunch of specialized stuff (much like any other medical specialization).
The doctor may only be working on your teeth and jaw, but they are very much connected to the rest of your body. The forces it takes to do a lot of work are substantial and doing it without causing injury is, frankly, miraculous.
That’s all taking place around several bundles of nerves that you reeaaaaaly don’t want damaged in the wrong way. On top of that, tooth infections can lead directly to brain infections, so there really is a life-or-death element.
You need to understand drug interactions, be prepared to handle alergic or other adverse reactions.
You also need to learn to take, or at least read X-Rays.
Saying dentistry is “just learning teeth” is like saying that becoming a surgeon is “just learning to use a scalpal”.
Most every discipline in medicine has a 4 year track, with 2 years of didactic classes transitioning to 2 years of clinical study.
Source: I am becoming an optometrist, my sister is a pharmacist, my other sibling is a dentist
Oversight is important and in place to protect people. Would you want to eat at a restaurant with no oversight on health inspections? Would you want a service or procedure performed with no oversight?
Medical professionals are overseen by a board making sure ethics and accountability are in place. School backs up the credentials.
I’m in DS now. It takes 4 years because of the depth of knowledge you are given. You are becoming a doctor, after all. (No, not a physician but still a doctor. Get over it).
I’ll be the first to say a lot of it is irrelevant. But that’s how it is. Why do we need to learn about the feet, functions of the digestive system, how hair cells look under a microscope? No idea.
Combined with needing a 4yr undergrad degree, as well as many dentists then pursuing another 1-6 years of specializing or residenc, it takes up a big chunk of your life. And finances
Are you suggesting less training for dentists?
It doesn’t. Think about dentistry like all the other specialties in medicine and you can see that it’s the shortest. It takes just 6 years but others take 10-12 years.
“Only teeth.”
Not like the mouth, jaw, and the surrounding/included tissues (which you’ll have to operate around/through) are highly vascular and filled with very important nerves.
Fun fact: to be a mouth, jaw, facial surgeon you need to have learned BOTH medical school AND dental school. So 11 years in total.
You can decrease the time by starting dental school immediately after high school. This can be done at schools in Europe, like CEU Cardinal Herrera University in Valencia, Spain, for example.
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