Heading into residencies, Dentistry grads hopeful for the future
New grads face unexpected hurdles — and find silver linings
Alina Phen knew that taking up the next stage of her career as a dentist would be tricky, though little did she imagine just how tricky. Accepted into a prestigious Advanced Education in General Dentistry program, Phen first needs to figure out how to get there: the one-year program is housed at the University of Rochester in New York state, epicentre of one of the largest outbreaks of the novel coronavirus in the world.
Phen is one of many Dentistry grads who have been accepted into residency programs this spring. Offered at hospitals and other health care settings throughout Canada and the U.S., in an ordinary year the programs give new grads opportunities to work closely with mentors as they gain vital on-the-job experience and become more confident care providers.
“This is definitely not what I envisioned when I first applied,” says Phen, who is looking forward to the opportunity to improve her clinical skills and increase the speed of her practice at her first choice of residency.
"I signed up to practice hospital-based dentistry and this is the reality of our world right now"
Yet, despite the many obstacles that the global pandemic has placed in their career paths — not the least of which, for Phen, is the ongoing closure of the Canada-U.S. border to non-essential travel — new grads are hopeful that they will be able to take up their residency programs as planned.
No concerns about hospital hotspots
Like Phen, the location of Aaron Miller’s upcoming residency program may also be problematic. He’s supposed to start a one-year general dentistry residency at the Montreal Children’s Hospital this June.
Beginning his career in a hospital setting — in the hardest-hit city in Canada — Miller is aware that the coming year might put him at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, but he maintains he’s not worried about his personal safety.
“I signed up to practice hospital-based dentistry and this is the reality of our world right now,” says Miller. “We all play our part, and there are many, many more health care workers more at risk than me, and they put on their boots every day.”
Despite the risks and uncertainty, including whether his program start will be delayed, Miller looks forward to building on the foundational skills he learned throughout his dental degree, and to practising paediatric dentistry, a specialty he may one day pursue through a master’s program.
“I want to give my patients one hundred per cent,” says Miller, who sees the hospital residency as an ideal bridge between dental school and the next stage of his career. “There’s still so much I have to learn,” he adds.
Thus far, the residents say, programs have been very accommodating. Phen says the University of Rochester has moved its orientation for residents online, so she’s not worried about missing out on this important part of her program. She’s additionally been given permission to finish the U.S. Board exams at a later date, once the sitting of these exams has resumed.
Strenuous PPE regulations and practice limitations anticipated
Lindsay Katchky, who begins a one-year residency at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in July, already knows about some of the accommodations her program is making during the pandemic.
At present, only emergencies are being seen in Sunnybrook’s hospital dental unit. And while she’s fairly confident that her program will begin on time, she knows that many aspects of patient care has been affected, from PPE requirements to how many patients can be seen over the course of the day. In fact, she’s already had a call with her future employers, who outlined which procedures are permitted under current practice recommendations. But, like her fellow residents, Katchky is acutely aware that much may change before her July 1st start date.
“I think it will just look at little different at first,” she says.
Heading into their futures realistically, but also incredibly optimistically —and not just that they’ll have an opportunity to treat a wide range of patients with complex needs over the course of their programs – residents like Phen see a silver lining in the pandemic.
“As new dentists coming up in the world, we have a unique opportunity to learn from this time. We can shape the new dentistry in light of the pandemic,” says Phen.
As the first class to graduate into a health profession remarkably altered by COVID-19, these new dentists feel that their experiences graduating in this remarkable time will serve them well as the profession of dentistry heads into a collective unknown. That spells an advantage for this class, who remain close knit despite having to graduate apart.
“It’s definitely been a challenging time, but we’re getting through it,” says Katchky.
Photos: banner: Alina Phen (Sharice Molko)