Of all the things that I thought would stop us working, a pandemic certainly wasn’t one. War, injury, sickness, burnout certainly crossed my mind but a pandemic, who would have thought.
That even as an essential service our wings would be clipped to such an extent that many of us have just had to close down. Now I realise that we have been walking a tightrope, believing that our jobs could sustain us no matter what. We are essential, we do provide a great service and we are well paid for what we do. Right there is the root of complacency. We are secure!
Apparently not, no security when there is an enforced shut down. No plan B in place, all eggs in the same proverbial basket. Loss of balance and we are headed for the ground, no safety net.
So what can we learn from this and what can we do while we are waiting to return to normal, if that will ever be a thing again. We are being advised to update our CPD, lots of it free online. Equipping us with even more techniques once we return to work. Once there it will be heads down, bums up in an attempt to get back to where we were.
According to the research I’ve done around stress and dentistry, many practitioners were already doing it hard. In the UK struggling with the NHS system and the US paying back enormous student loans. The stress this has caused, along with the increasing fear of litigation has pushed many to the limits already, some questioning whether they had chosen the right profession in the first place, others in or approaching burnout. So with this as the backdrop what are the options?
Assuming that you still want to work as a dentist, why not diversify, niche your practice, reduce your chair side hours and find a separate source of income? Fortunately we started this before the pandemic and so while I’m not in the surgery, we still have a way of pulling in an income and it’s not dentistry!
I’d love to share that with you. What we are doing is for everyone, not just dentists. However I wanted to reach out to my profession because there is so much more that I’d like to share with you.
You might just want to cut to the chase, see what we’re involved in outside dentistry and dive right in to that. See what I am doing to safeguard my family moving forwards. That’s absolutely fine too, just submit your interest and we’ll go from there.
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