New graduate experience: Expectation versus reality

By Dr Louise Hanrahan

In December 2014, I was freshly graduated, with hundreds of hours of clinical practice under my belt, and raring to get started as a ‘real dentist’.

I had a position in public health that allowed me a few weeks off before I started, which gave me time to contemplate what was coming. I couldn’t wait to see what I could do as a qualified dentist, especially after two amazing public clinic placements. 

I had the usual concerns that any new graduate has when starting out, but I was keen to earn my first paycheck, anticipated high patient satisfaction, and was excited to finally be able to make treatment decisions without needing to confirm them. 

I felt work-ready when I started, thanks to all my previous clinical exposure and support during my final year of university. But when you’re a dental student, you get to excuse yourself from everything else that comes with working as a dentist – post-qualification, it’s no longer as simple as turning up to work and doing dentistry. You have to figure out your role in a team and how to work as part of it - it’s not as black and white as “I’m the dentist now”. 

Suddenly, you’re not just dealing with a patient; you’re balancing patients’ needs and expectations with your skillset and the rest of the clinic’s timetable. Time management becomes so much more important – you can’t fall back on seeing one or two patients before morning tea anymore, and there’s no working through breaks (if you want your assistant to like you, that is). You have to decide where to draw the line and reassess if a tooth is not budging after working at it for half an hour. And how do you handle the team dynamic when your assistant has a not-so-subtle reaction when you ask for a rubber dam setup? 

Overall, I found it difficult to handle the expectation versus the reality, and not to lose hope about what I thought it would be like to be a ‘real dentist’. 

The biggest lesson I have learnt during the last two years of working is that if you are in a supportive professional environment, you will flourish. At first I had concerns that there was something wrong with me when my expectations didn’t live up to reality; maybe I was difficult to work with, maybe I was asking for help too frequently, or maybe I was being too hesitant in what I felt comfortable doing. 

Since I’ve started my current job, my expectations have changed and reality has improved. I have days working as a sole practitioner, which initially was overwhelming, and even now I still prefer working alongside another dentist so that I can talk to them about cases. I often can’t believe how lucky I am to be in such a supportive team, and how much my sense of self – professionally and personally – has improved over the last 12 months. 

Now, if I get a dose of neuroses (which happens from time to time), I’m quicker to step back and assess the situation as impartially as I can. If I can’t be impartial, I’ll talk about it with my coworkers or university friends, and work out how to fix whatever is giving me trouble. It’s easy for some people to tell me to relax, but I can deal with something far better by fixing a problem, self-perceived or otherwise, instead of pretending it doesn’t bother me in the first place.  

I think every new graduate has similar expectations – that they’ll be working full time right out of university, that they won’t to have a strict budget anymore, that all of their patients will like them and that everything they do will be perfect the first time; they will be the ‘Greatest Graduate’ ‘real dentist’ the world has ever seen! 

A dose of reality isn’t always the nicest thing, but it does help to know you’ve got the support of someone who’s been through it before. Find a supportive network, and keep in mind your expectations and reality will change the further you get into your career – often for the better!