‘Just in Time Learning’ and Career Development – AJ008

[Jaz]
And you know what? The answer just might shock you. The other thing that Dhruti asked is what happens when you qualify? Like when you qualify, what are the kind of courses and education that we should be seeking? We also discussed a little bit of the clinical stuff like occlusion, obviously, but there’s once again a lot more in there about the work life balance and the journey of the career that we’re in. So I hope you enjoy it and I’ll catch you in the outro.

Dhruti Mysore, welcome to the student’s edition of the Protrusive Dental Podcast. How are you?

[Dhruti]
I’m good. It’s nice that you could have me on. I’ve been such a big fan of you, I’ve been listening to you for the last two years. And yeah, we just finished final exams for fourth year now. So we have about a month of clinics left and then we’re done for the year.

[Jaz]
But so if you finish your final exam, so this is at Plymouth by the way, right? So that means fifth year, is it a chilled year at your uni? Is that relatively, you can’t say that now, you’re shaking your head. Okay.

[Dhruti]
No, no.

[Jaz]
What have you got in store fifth year then?

[Dhruti]
So fifth year we have OSCEs and we have like three sets of MCQ exams. And we have sort of the SJT for our foundation year as well.

[Jaz]
And that’s around the corner, right? That’s probably September, October, November time, I think.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite soon. And then we have other little modules, critical appraisal essays. It’s sort of all powered on in fifth year. So, yeah.

[Jaz]
But do you feel a sense of relief getting fourth year out of the way? Cause it sounds like it’s quite exam heavy, right?

[Dhruti]
Yeah. So actually our fourth year was a little bit different. So we, do you know Truro in Cornwall?

[Jaz]
Yeah. Yes, of course, beautiful part of the world.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, so we are actually, my whole year lives down here for this year. And it’s sort of like we do a placement year there. So we’re all down in Cornwall and then next year we’re back to Plymouth. So it is nice sort of going back to like, you know, my uni city. But we’re all going to miss Cornwall. And it’s been really nice because clinic is only like a five minute walk because we live in the hospital accommodation.

So it’s really nice to be able to go home at lunchtime and then if there’s no patient, sometimes we just go home and that’s like, I think that’s what’s going to be missed as well about next year. So this year, the clinics have been more intense, but a little bit more nice because we get to have a little breather and get to go home as well.

[Jaz]
Me and my friends used to live right next to a dental hospital in Sheffield. So when there was no patient or when we were just up for lunch for an hour and a half break, we’d just go to the flat. And because we’re the people who live the nearest, like all the other friends would come through and play FIFA and stuff. So that was fun. It reminds you of those times. But I imagine that the night life in Truro Cornwall isn’t as much as it is perhaps in the big cities.

[Dhruti]
No, no, no. But now is probably the best time because obviously it’s a lot warmer now. So beaches and things are so much nicer now. So I guess here it’s more of like a south vibe, beach vibe. And then, yeah, but obviously like London and stuff, like you can’t compare.

[Jaz]
Of course. Well, we were talking earlier about your experiences and stuff, and I just wanted to, I always like to dive into people’s backgrounds and stuff. Are you, your surname is South Indian in origin, is that right?

[Dhruti]
Yeah. So my family’s originally from Bangalore. And then I don’t know if you’ve heard of Mysore, but it’s a little like-

[Jaz]
Karnataka, right?

[Dhruti]
It’s in Karnataka. Karnataka, yeah, yeah. So it’s the state next to Bangalore. And my parents actually met there, so that’s why it’s our surname.

[Jaz]
Very nice. Very nice. And so I always look at the, I like a Dosa. and then, so when you go to the dorsal place, they said Mysore Dosa, right?

[Dhruti]
Mysore Dosa, yeah. Yeah.

[Jaz]
So that’s a reminder. When I saw your name card, I was like, okay, this woman reminds you of I li dorsal. There we are.

[Dhruti]
Very nice.

[Jaz]
But anyway, we’re not talking about Dosa today. We’re talking about all the things that you’d like to talk to as is from a student perspective. So what kind of questions can me and the community, sometimes I don’t have all the answers, but we have a really thriving community of the nicest and geekiest dentists in the world in Protrusive Guidance. So if there’s anything that you know what I think we need more input for, we’ll definitely put that to community. So, what would you like to know?

[Dhruti]
I think I want to start off with more like non clinical questions. Just talk about things like when you were in sort of my position, both in dental school, what do you wish that you had sort of started doing, is there any regrets you had that like, you should have done some extra stuff during university, not in terms of dentistry, but just in terms of, did you wish you had sort of more time to do other hobbies, anything that you’d wanted to take on now that maybe later on during your career you didn’t have time to do?

[Jaz]
When I was in Sheffield, we were right next to the Peak District, right? And I really wish I actually enjoyed it more in that regard. So I was doing more things in Sheffield. I did plenty of nights out and stuff, especially first and second year and stuff. So that was good. Very social, very good, very fun.

We did with social scene I kept up with, but I wish I enjoyed the beauty of nature. So I really hope for you, like being in such a nice part of the world, make sure you get into the whole surfing scene and enjoy the beauty of Truro Cornwall. So definitely. I wish I can go back in time and enjoy that because I was so fixated especially in my final year on doing so well in the exam.

Like really, when you look at it, your exam results will not dictate your success. I know it’s probably something you don’t want to hear as a student, right? Because you can’t actually imagine life beyond your final exam. Like it doesn’t, it’s very difficult. I found it very difficult to imagine anything beyond the 6th of July when I knew it was my final exam.

So whilst it’s difficult to imagine life beyond it. You have to remember that this is not the be all and end all. And your exam results have zero correlation with your success. Now, we owe it to ourselves, because as dentists, we’re high achievers, we come from like in high A levels and that kind of stuff.

And we want to do the best we can. And the values of applying yourself and doing the best you can should be expressed, but it should not consume you. So you lose the sort of fun element of it. And so really make sure, Dhruti, that as you go into fifth year, you don’t lose that little spark, little fun.

Don’t sacrifice those special last few moments as a student, because you’ll miss being a student, right? Don’t sacrifice that for an extra one or two percent for, especially if it’s not going to be super relevant for the real world.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you. I’ll definitely keep that in mind. What have you sort of retained from university? Do you think like in terms of even dentistry, what is there anything even like, I don’t know, ways that you crown prep ways that you do, composites or something like that. Is there anything that you have, like a key memory of your supervisor telling you something? Do you have any moments like that?

[Jaz]
I was smiling when you’re asking that question, right? Because the more questions you ask me, Dhruti, the more you’re going to wish you hadn’t asked him, right? Let me tell you why. Okay. So recently I did a little episode, like a little segment of an episode where I really looked into the techniques that I use now, like 11 years after dental school now.

And I think back at my time as a dental student, very few, if any, thing that I learned as a dental student. I do in the real world. So this seems a bit very abstract and stuff and seems very scary as a student. But let me back that up scientifically and give you some hardcore evidence here.

Okay. So extractions. When you extract teeth, Dhruti, what have you been taught to do? Just roughly what instruments you use. How you approach an extraction, the use of forceps, the use of whatever. Just give me a flavor of how many extractions you’ve done.

[Dhruti]
So my uni is really clinical. So we actually started seeing patients in first year, started doing extractions in second year. And then, yeah, we’ve been doing them since. So we’ve done, people in my year have done quite a few, but we normally do, we start off with luxators. We have to luxate, luxate, luxate really well. And then Coupland.

[Jaz]
That’s really good. A lot of dental schools, they don’t let you touch the luxator actually, because they A, the risk of actually, it might’ve happened to you. You just slip a little bit. And you’re just like, oh, that was a close call. So the risk of the safety concern, but also they want you to become good at forceps kind of thing. I don’t know what that means. But it’s great firstly that using luxators, please carry on, what else do you do?

[Dhruti]
Yeah. Oh, actually with the luxators, we weren’t allowed in second year. Only in third year, so then in second year, we had to get the supervisors to luxate for us and then we would just put the forceps on and then we do, we use like Couplands, criers, Warwick James, and then just forceps really, but yeah, we, we learned the forcep technique fast and then for the whole of second year, we were only just doing forceps, so yeah.

[Jaz]
So now let me now retaliate and give you my real world experience now. Most multi rooted teeth. I will section first. It is much kinder to the bone. Cause if you imagine you’re doing this bucco-lingual, you’re expanding that bone, you’re fracturing buccal plates, even if you don’t notice you’re fracturing them basically.

So with how implant dentistry is taken off, even though I don’t place implants, I want it to be a home run by the time it gets to my implantologist, so I’m very, very cautious about atraumatic extractions. And I don’t believe you can be doing atraumatic extractions if you’re not routinely or high percentage of the time sectioning teeth. So do you know what I mean by sectioning teeth?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, we only do them during surgicals, but even for surgicals, like in our uni, we need to sort of book like time specifically with a supervisor. If it’s difficult, they have to be one on one, right? And if they’re on, they can’t check on the other students.

So yeah, it’s not, we don’t routinely section, if there is like something that is quite, supervisors look at the x rays and stuff and they think, okay, you know what, you might section that, then we do it, but it’s not a routine thing for us.

[Jaz]
So there we are. So, I think dental school has a responsibility to the foundations, right? And so that’s great, but I just don’t use them anymore. And that’s not to say that what we were taught is not valid. Please don’t, no one interpret this, dental school is BS. It is our duty and responsibility to build on dental school. If you’re using the same techniques that you taught dental school, there’s something seriously wrong, like with what you’re doing.

Like if you’re five years out, 10 years out, 20 years out, if you’re still using the same techniques, that means you haven’t grown. Right? So first, please don’t be disheartened by what I’m saying, Dhruti and any of the students and young people listening, please remember that actually the whole point of me changing is because I found ways that are kinder to my patients, more efficient, more profitable, whatever it might be, basically.

But in the best interest of me as a clinician and the patient. And so think of it as not a changing for the sake of changing, but evolution. Think of it, evolution of your techniques being kinder. So for example, I section because I want more bone and that’s a very worthy cause, I think.

So let’s talk about another thing, right? You said crowns and stuff, crown preps. The last time I did a full coverage crown as my first choice restoration was a long time ago. Basically, when we’re doing crowns nowadays, right? We’re doing them to replace existing crowns. But our first port of call, I’m not even getting into a VertiPrep.

Let’s ignore VertiPrep for a minute. Onlays, right? I don’t know. Maybe you guys are forward thinking. Have you been taught much about onlays? Have you done any onlays? Tell me about experiences of crowns and indirect restorations.

[Dhruti]
I’ve done two direct onlays I have one indirect onlay coming on.

[Jaz]
Very good.

[Dhruti]
But yeah, we do. I mean, we were originally best taught, like, for gold crowns and stuff. And then from then we had, like, sessions where we did onlays, three quarter crowns, and things. But it is a very much like choice based because I think in fourth year now, they expect us to sort of come up with our own treatment plans, come up with our own decisions, as long as they’re clinically valid, then, we can choose.

[Jaz]
But those decisions, Dhruti, are heavily influenced by whichever tutor you have on the day on the clinic, right?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.

[Jaz]
So what you’re learning is from them. So if they’re not into adhesive dentistry, biomimetic dentistry, call it what you want, basically. So they may not be saying, let’s do an Emax overlay under here, under rubber dam kind of thing, which is a very staple restoration that I do.

So in my experience, okay, obviously a little bit older than you, I was not taught on lays at dental school. It was PFM, full gold crown. I don’t even remember doing an all ceramic crown at dental school actually. It was very much PFM heavy. And then just learning how to do an Emax onlay, lithium disilicate, zirconia restorations, this has all been out of dental school.

So now all the crown prep techniques, again, the foundations, the importance of a correct occlusal clearance, the contact opening, to make sure you don’t do any extra damage. That is still there, right? But the techniques have once again evolved, right? So it’s the evolution of that as well. Even LA, right? Yesterday I took out a lower molar, again, I sectioned it. Okay. And I did it just with articane and buccal and lingual infiltration. No ID block.

[Dhruti]
Oh, okay. Wow.

[Jaz]
Okay. And when I was a student, I was like, wow, I can’t imagine that. Right. And so I do less than one ID block a month. I say on average, right. So if you do an average now, because I just find articane buccal infiltration just works. So if it was okay, if it was your family member, right, if it was your mother, your father, right. And you had to numb them up, right. And you had the choice. They both work in your hands because you’ve done enough of it. You can give them an ID block or you can give them a buccal infiltration. Which one would you do?

[Dhruti]
See, that’s weird because in my dental school, they make us do IDs and arcticane buccal intervals for extraction.

[Jaz]
And you should. And Dhruti, you should learn. I want you to learn how to do a good ID block. So please do it. Okay. Do it, learn it. Right. But what I’m trying to say is the ways where we can use local anesthetic, just buccal arcticane infiltration is can be so effective that is seriously decreased. So for example, there are risks. Albeit rare, but you know, when you do so many hundreds of ID blocks, risk of hematoma, risk of nerve damage in case you hit the nerve, whatever.

The whole jumping patient, which happened to me as a dental student as well, when you hit the ID canal, when you’re super accurate and stuff. And I just find this though, that my ability to give a painless anesthetic with a buccal infiltration is infinite fold higher compared to an ID block, right?

And no matter how all the techniques I use, I rub the cheek. So really cool trick to do is if you’re right handed, you’re giving a ID block on the patient’s right hand side, right? So you use your left hand to use your thumb to grab the external oblique ridge. Okay. And then your fingers are like on the cheek, right?

So I’m now rubbing with my thumb. I’m rubbing the buccal mucosa with my thumb, like vigorously, right? This is like the gate theories to distraction. And so even with that, like my patients don’t feel much thankfully. Okay. But I’m still able to be painless more with a buccal infiltration. So that’s going to get completely changed.

I didn’t use the anesthetic techniques that were taught to me at dental school. But once again, it’s an evolution. That doesn’t mean what they’re teaching you at dental school is wrong. I would, I think it would be a disgrace if you guys weren’t taught ID blocks. Because guess what happens when my buccal infiltrations don’t work? One in 3,4, I give an ID block. So it’s a really important skill to have still.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, no, definitely. That’s interesting. I’ll take that on. And yeah, I definitely agree. I feel like even with any skill, you can be taught the foundations, but you shouldn’t really be stuck at the foundation should you, you should always be evolving, trying to learn more.

[Jaz]
Always be open to other techniques and other ways of doing things. Absolutely. It’s the final thing.

[Dhruti]
And yeah, on that note, I wanted to ask you about say, well, even during uni or sort of straight after foundation or anything like that, what sort of courses would you recommend for fresh graduates or even any sort of courses or conferences to go to in dental school? So I’ve been to BDSA. And yeah, that’s about it.

[Jaz]
That’s fine. I mean, BDSA was great. My fondest memories were part of the BDSA. It was just a great electric atmosphere. So it’s great that BDSA is still running, getting strong, I hope. I know they had a little blip during COVID years and stuff, but that’s super, super great.

So yeah, that’s good. And to have the flavor of that, because when you’re a dentist and you got your grinding Monday, Friday, sometimes weekends, and you’re seeing patients, patients, patients, and you can suffer with burnout. And then really when you have that course that you booked on, like a few months in advance, that course comes, maybe it’s a Friday or Saturday.

It’s so nice to have that course to learn, focus on learning again, focus on self improvement, meet people who are having similar challenges to you are. So definitely go on courses. I think it’s fantastic. Even just the social element of it, even just a break from the daily grind in terms of what kinds of courses I would suggest, that when you’re in your first year, let’s say in the, obviously lots of people, lots of different countries listen to this podcast.

So it depends on your country, but let’s focus on UK. For example, you have your dental foundation year. You pretty much have like a weekly thing and a monthly thing, which has already organized for you. So the need and the budget for courses at that time may not be as high. So really you’re looking at courses outside after your first year, hopefully have a bit more disposable income, more to invest in yourself. And therefore I would say. Like at that stage of your career, you’re not really sure most people, 98 percent of people aren’t really sure exactly which direction they want to go in.

So you want to keep your options open. So I think all dentists should be good at painless anesthetic. They should be good at extractions, right? Because if someone’s in pain, right? Extractions, basic endo, basic perio, just maybe either going like on one perio course or one endo course to build up the foundations or advance the foundations that are built on dental school, right?

Yeah, and then see okay. What are you enjoying more at the moment? What do you actually think it looks like you’re good at and you can actually go further? So sometimes people say focusing weaknesses, but actually the evidence suggests that we should not be focusing on our weaknesses if we don’t actually focus on our strengths, develop your strengths, you will go much further developing your strengths, right?

So for example, some dentists early on, they say that, you know what, I really like working with composite. I just closed a diastema today and it felt great. I love the confidence boost to get our patients. And just because you did it, had a good run. It doesn’t mean that you just say, oh, you know what? I don’t need a composite course because I managed to do good in my patients.

Actually, you’re going to go much further by learning more techniques and then you’ll actually feel that passion more. So that’s just one example. So look at your strengths and how can you feel that? But then also look at your weaknesses. What do you dread? What gives you anxiety? So a lot of young dentists routine will get anxiety when extraction in the book.

And therefore, it’s really a fundamental skill for like basic extraction, surgical seals, either it’s pig heads or whatever. So have something like that, like sectioning is such an important thing. For example.

[Dhruti]
That’s really useful. Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind.

[Jaz]
I think a lot of stuff actually, and I’m really jealous of your generation, Dhruti, because when I was at dental school, there was hardly anything on YouTube. Instagram isn’t where it is now, right? So Instagram was very primitive. YouTube content, video content, high quality video content was very primitive. And it was mostly the textbooks we had to rely on. And even then they were difficult to get hold of. And so now you have the university of YouTube.

Which you have to take everything with a pinch of salt, but you have, if you want to see a specific step by step composite. You can now see hundreds of videos on YouTube. If you want to see me section a molar, you can see a very good high quality 4k video on YouTube. I talk you fully through it.

So there’s a lot out there, which we can do. So the problem we have now, Dhruti, is not where is the content is now it’s content overload. And so we have to really value our time and respect our time. You can get carried away. Let me give you an example. At one point in time, I was like, hmm, I wonder what a crown lengthening looks like.

I’m really fascinated. How does crown lengthening work? Okay. So I started going YouTube. I started read books. I started to read papers about crown lengthening. Okay. Guess what? I didn’t do crown lengthening for another three years. So I’m not saying it was a waste, but I’m a big fan of just in time learning.

So just in time learning is basically you found a patient, you realize that actually speaking to my mentor, this might be a good case for a chrome denture. Oh, you know what? I haven’t done many chrome dentures. Let me really read up about chrome dentures and watch those videos, right? So let me watch really good videos on how to take a really good primary impression, because guess what?

My patient’s in next week, right? And so not only are you learning something that’s relevant, helping your patient, but it’s going to be fresh and applicable. So my total philosophy is really value high up just in time learning more than curiosity learning.

[Dhruti]
Okay. That’s really useful as well. Cause it sort of gives you that motivation and that push to if you have any roadblock, okay, actually my patient is coming in next week. I have to sort of learn this as best as I can. Yeah.

[Jaz] You get to apply it right away, which is the number one thing for any course you do in the future, Dhruti, make sure you can apply it right away.

[Dhruti]
Right away. Okay. Then how do you feel about sort of stuff like research, publishing, even during university, straight out of university? Is that anything, is that sort of down your alley or is that something that you would encourage, someone to try and get just help in an article somewhere?

[Jaz]
I think it’s a great thing. It’s a noble thing to be involved in. It’s like giving back in a way to a profession. It’s adding to the wealth of information that’s out there. I think it depends, like if you like doing, reading lots of papers and critiquing them, and then doing either a literature review or having the opportunity to get involved in research, those opportunities are very difficult unless you’re doing a PhD or you’re in a hospital attachment. So those opportunities are difficult.

I recently got approached to partake in some sort of IPR. research, which is an interproximal reduction for orthodontics, like to basically strip some enamel away to get some space, right? So I’ve been invited to that. And that’s not even like a paid thing. That’s just to do for the good of the dental profession to do some more research in that way.

Even you might’ve read some resin bonded bridge papers that I wrote some years ago now with the authors, the highly respected clinicians that I wrote with. That was like a, I don’t know, it wasn’t for the money. It was hardly, it was peanuts involved in it. But it was the joy of compiling something together.

So there is some joy to be gained, but it’s not for everyone. It really depends on you as an individual. Some people hate the thought of being in front of a laptop and typing and that kind of stuff. So if that’s not your bag, if you don’t enjoy it, if you don’t enjoy academic writing, then, that’s not for you.

But if you have an interest in that, that can really break up the week. It’s just finding the opportunities. Dhruti is very, very difficult. So when there’s a will, there’s a way. If you knock on the right doors, if you email the right people, the way you got involved in this podcast, I love the fact that you’re like, you were keen, you’re like, yes, let’s do it.

And I was like, okay, fine. Cause I had a really busy phase, but I was like, okay, Dhruti, I’m so sorry. Let’s get this started cause I think it’d be great. So again, you showed all the right values in someone who really wants to partake in something, right? You showed the amazing values and actually, you know what? When there’s a will, there’s a way. You say persistent, you say consistent and then you get to make a contribution.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, no, I was thinking about that. And I think during uni, there is actually quite a few opportunities. And like you said, maybe after you graduate, that isn’t as much. So yeah, I think now I’m starting to sort of do that sort of stuff, trying publish something, try and write an article for the BDJ, but.

In third year, I sort of wish I’d done one at least or even in second year, just because it might not be a lot that you do or just help out on another clinician’s paper, but at least it sort of gives you something, gives you some sort of insight into what the competition is out like there, what sort of stuff you can add to your own CV and things like that.

[Jaz]
That and also just by the act of doing it, the amount of research you then have to read and critique and stuff, it builds your own wealth of experience, right? It actually gives you some papers to read, which gives you more knowledge. And so I think there’s always something to be gained. It’s about finding the opportunity.

So if you have access to opportunities, I think do it. I think totally do it. If you’re in that right environment, the right phase of life, it’s a great thing to do because in the future, for those who want to do, have a family and stuff, there’s a whole phase of life where you, it’s very difficult to contribute to things like that because of the phase of life you’re in.

So life comes in seasons, right? So if you’re in the right season of life. It’s important to explore that, explore different opportunities, such as research and stuff. If you have the right people who are either consultants or academically driven or have got like these people who have their papers, right?

They’ve either got like one or two paper or hundreds of papers, right? And some people are just like prolific. And so you attach yourself to one of them. And at any one time they’ve got 20 or 30 projects, they’d be like, hmm, why don’t you help this individual with this paper? And you’ll learn something, right? Why not?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, wow. And then I had just another question before I wanted to ask you some clinical questions. So my question is, can you tell me a little bit about your journey, really, from when you graduated? I know you were interested in orthodontics for a little bit. About your transition from if you did in the NHS work to private, sort of like a little summary about how you would say your course has gone.

[Jaz]
Okay. So when I entered in dental school, I wanted to be an orthodontist because I had braces. I was like, oh my goodness, I want to give this to my patients. The whole confidence and the smile, that kind of stuff, which was great. Then when I went on orthoclinics, I was like, what the hell’s going on? I have no idea what’s going on.

It’s so confusing. I didn’t really enjoy it. So that’s that. And then I had a little affinity for endodontics because I had a really good endodontic tutor. And then actually, funny story is when I had braces, I didn’t realize at a time, but fast forward four years as a first year dental student, I was in agony.

I was in severe toothache. I was like crying in tears with pain. I go, I was a first year dental student. So I go to the clinic and to see the fourth year students, right. And they’re there and then what they’re doing, they’re doing vitality testing. All of my lower incisors are TTP. Then they’re doing vitality testing.

They’re getting the ethyl chloride or they didn’t have endo frost in the clinic and they’re testing every single tooth. It’s like, wait, why is it not responding? Then they take a PA, huge apical infection, like enormous, right? On my lower incisors. Okay. And so we thought, hmm, have you had trauma before? No.

And then, so we think that it’s orthodontics. So very rare side effect orthodontics, okay, is a devitalization of teeth. So all my lower four incisors were devitalized, huge infections, eventually root filled while at dental school. Thank goodness. And so now I’ve lost one of them. It’s got a resin bonded bridge.

So. maybe you never know. Maybe that put me off ortho. I don’t know. Subconsciously, who knows? Right. Anyway, so I then had an affinity for restorative dentistry and I really wanted to, but when I qualified, if you ask me in final year that, that Jaz, what do you want to do now? It was either endo or I really want to go into restorative, like a restorative consultant, restorative registrar.

You get to kind of like be a specialist in endo, prostho, perio. So that was like exciting for me. So then I did DF1 and I did a dental core training post in oral surgery and restorative. And then I did a DCT2 post in Sheffield in purely restorative. And that was great. I got to use a microscope.

I did like re RCTs. I did some buildups. That was amazing. So it actually made me realize that yes, I do love restorative dentistry. However, it made me realize that I don’t love it in a hospital setting because it was too slow. I didn’t like the pace of it. I didn’t like the fact, the lack of innovation, my friends already started scanning and stuff.

And I was like, we’re taking impressions. So then that’s when I devoted myself to, okay, I want to do restorative dentistry to a high level. What do I need to do to practice that? So I was already doing a Saturday job in NHS dentistry, like an NHS associate. I always feel as though, I come from a background, I’ve got very humble beginnings, I came as a refugee to the country when I was six years old.

I’m very grateful to the country for, for giving me an education and therefore, I kind of felt like this responsibility to give back to the UK and I thought maybe that was me having to do it through the NHS maybe, but, me personally, I like to do dentistry by the book and I like to take my time and I’m very bad under time pressure.

So I couldn’t hack it. So absolute kudos, respect, and I bow down to any dentist who can work at that pace. I sucked at it. I couldn’t do it. Therefore, I wanted to go private, but at the time I didn’t have much experience. I didn’t have that many contacts. So me and my wife, we decided, okay, you know what?

Before we joined the rat race and we get a mortgage and we work in a practice and more than likely it’d be a mixed practice. I can’t get a private job. I’m too young. And so we went to Singapore. We went to Singapore, a little detour there because we thought, why not? When we know we just recently married, we don’t have any kids yet.

We don’t have a mortgage yet. If you don’t do something crazy like this now, when will we do it? So we moved to Singapore, worked in private dentistry and traveled. We went to Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Australia. We just had a fantastic 18 months. I want to stay there forever. My wife got homesick.

And so we came back to London. By then I had a portfolio to show. To then get into private dentistry, which is where I worked in your neck of the woods in, in Summertown, Oxford, Richmond, beautiful practices, right? And then I got to really do the type of dentistry that I wanted to do. And so now I’m in private practice.

I like restorative dentistry. I love my restorative. I do a bit of everything generalist. I like my extractions and the more occlusal stuff. I like it. I’m not a prosthodontist. A lot of my dentistry is single tooth dentistry. But I just take the joy in the processes basically. So I’m a general dentist who’s a happy general dentist. I have no intention of owning a practice. I just love the clinical element of it. So that’s like a one or two minute summary of my career so far.

[Dhruti]
Wow, that’s amazing. That really, that, wow, that’s such a rollercoaster. But it’s so good that now you can do something that you really love and it’s giving you a lot of benefits and things. And even like CDT, we’re talking about your core dental training. That’s something that I’m looking at doing regardless whether I want to take that further or not. But would you say that you like recommend doing core dental post?

[Jaz]
See, this is, yeah, this is a tough one, right? Because my first post was oral surgery restorative. The oral surgery element was good, but I know other colleagues who had it much better. They got a lot more hands on. I was like, assisting a lot. I didn’t actually get to do as much as I wanted. Whereas other colleagues were doing a lot more. So it really depends on what your hospital attachment you get.

And then the restorative was pants. So I’m not going to name the hospital that you can probably Google. So you’re a tadpole in this ocean and then there’s all these sharks and big fish and you’re not going to get the fun cases. You’re going to get all the junk, right? And so that’s what I experienced then.

So my honest answer is, it can be good. Like my second DCT post in Sheffield was fantastic, right? So it depends like everything, like which tutor you have on the day or which consultant you’re under or, so there’s a lot of luck in there. So you can do it, but just be prepared that if you don’t get a quote unquote good post, then what are you going to do?

What opportunities are you going to create for yourself? Because Dhruti, when I had that not so good post, that’s the year I wrote the paper. That’s the year I wrote the two part paper on resin bonded bridges. Because that was my carving my own opportunity in the world. When life gave me not such a good scenario, I was like, okay, you know what? Instead of just sulking and doing nothing and being miserable about it, how can I channel my energy into something else?

[Dhruti]
That’s really interesting. Wow. And sometimes I think that’s something that people struggle with and they like when they’re sort of in a hard time or they’re in somewhere they’re not happy with. They do sort of spiral into that, I’m not happy in this, I’m not happy in that, rather than trying to take that outside and thinking, actually, what can I do now that would take me away from this thing a little bit, right? That’s really interesting. Yeah. So now I have some questions on occlusion, because I’m sure you know, most dental students We don’t know much about occlusion.

We try, I mean, we have some really good like lecturers. We have some really good, I think the head of clinic in Portia, he’s a really like good prosthodontist, but even then I, for one, don’t really understand occlusion. So.

[Jaz]
And it’s because, Dhruti, you haven’t seen enough patients to see how it actually works in the real world in the mouths long term as well. So it’s not your fault. And also you have to start with the foundations, which is the definitions. And then what happens then school is you get stuck at that. So if I asked you what MIP means or central relation, you may be able to give me the textbook definition, but clinically to actually show me how it actually influences the success and failure of restorations, that might be a difficult link to draw at your stage. That’s totally normal.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. So like right now, some of us do things which is like anything changing occlusion, but right now we’re trying to do things which just conform to occlusion. But for example, if you had a patient with a difficult accrusal scheme, such as class threes or cross bites, things like that. And also maybe it wasn’t an option for them. How would you manage placing bridges, crowns, composites in these sort of, what’s your go to for those sorts of things?

[Jaz]
Okay. So when you have a challenging occlusion, because what happens that you open the textbook and you see a beautiful classroom occlusion, and then you lower the textbook and you look at your patient and the patient looks nothing like that.

Like you look at the book, you look at the patient, you look at the book, look at the patient, like what the hell happened here? Like this, this is not how I was taught. This is completely breaking all the rules. So what do you do? So there’s only two ways you can go in that scenario.

Either you go the whole hog and you go comprehensive. And therefore, okay, that will need a multidisciplinary approach. Sometimes it needs orthodontist, a periodontist to try and make it work long term. But sometimes either the patient can’t afford it, or it’s just not realistic for you, or you just have to do the best with what you have.

And so the advice is do the best what you have, but don’t do things that are going to be unpredictable because of the occlusion. So what I mean by that is we have a duty when someone comes with a rollercoaster occlusion, we have a duty to get them out of pain. We have a duty to make sure that their caries stabilize.

We have a duty to make sure that we work on the periodontium to get them healthy, good OHI and stuff. When it comes to more complex things like replacing missing teeth, treating the worn dentition, sometimes you have to really take a step back and say, look, I think we’ve done phase one. We’ve got you healthy.

Really what you need now is someone with, because we can’t treat all the cases, right? When you’re newly qualified, do the single crowns in reasonable occlusions, do the class 4 composite, do the perio and then build up from there. So maybe that kind of patient who comes with too many challenges will need a prosthodontist because they need to make money as well.

They need to eat, right? So we need to serve, we need to feed our prosthodontist, we need to feed our specialist. There’s still, 7 percent of dentistry is still done by a specialist. 93 percent of the dentistry is done by a general dentist. So remember that not every battle is yours, and you can only do so much.

Now, if you give me a specific scenario for that, I might be able to give more specific answers, but what I read, read between the lines there is when you have a trickier occlusion, I think, and you can’t solve that occlusion because it’s too much involved. Then remember, go back to basics, get them healthy, but realize that when it comes to the trickier things, we have a role to refer.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, okay, that’s very useful. That’s interesting. And I know now you said you do more single tooth dentistry, but back when you did, other stuff, how would you sort of implement a face bow and things like that into your work? Would you use it for all your occlusion patients or?

[Jaz]
Good. Good question. Okay. So when I said about single tooth dentistry, it makes a lot of my dentistry. A lot of them are quadrant dentistry as well. So we do like lower right and entire quadrant because there’s failing restorations and then I do full mouth stuff as well. So it is a good mixed bag. But the reason I made that comment earlier is because I’m very much generous.

I’m not a prosthodontist seeing full mouth cases day in, day out. I’m not that guy. I work in a little village and patients have perio, they’ve got caries, they got all sorts. I’m able to cater to them all. But now, and again, I don’t. I get a referral case and I get to have some fun. I do lots of TMD cases. So it’s good fun. So really the facebow element from your understanding, what you understand so far, Dhruti, what have you guys been taught about the role of a facebow?

[Dhruti]
Just if you know, you want to take a facebow record, if they have a complex occlusion, if you’re replacing, if you’re doing like multiple bridges, multiple crowns, complete dentures, even just complex dentures, things like that. But personally, I haven’t done one yet. I haven’t done one yet. So, yeah.

[Jaz]
Fine. And so my question to you, okay, but so we are taught that, okay, if you’re doing more than two units, okay, then use a facebow. If you’ve got an occlusal cant, aesthetic cant, use a facebow. And I’m putting on the spot here and it’s a rhetorical question.

I’m not saying it for you. Why? Like, okay, but they said, use this. You’re supposed to use it because it’s a complex occlusion case. You’ve got a dodgy occlusion, you use a facebow, right? So that’s what they say. I’m here to say, but why? So only when we understand the role of the facebow, you understand it.

And I can go through the whole thing. I can say, your textbook answer is to be able to relate the maxillary cast the hinges of the face of the articulator. The condyle of the articulator, if you like. But really what to put it in simple terms, right? When you have the patient in front of you, the living, breathing patient in front of you, okay?

How can you transfer the head on a table? That’s where the facebow comes in handy. That’s when actually the little angulations that they produced, the cants, the way that you move the models on the articulator, how can you make it similar? Or exact in an ideal world, but it’s never going to be exact.

How can you make it similar to what the patient does in their mouth? So that when you are planning the crown, when you’re planning the shape and the slopes of the fillings, you don’t need to do the wax up in the patient’s mouth. You don’t need to make the crown, put the crown of the patient in the oven to bake the crown stuff.

You can do it on the model, right? So remember the function of the facebow is to relate the maxillary cost, but if you read, go all the way to the fundamental, what is the reason we do all those things is so that we can do the planning. Exactly. We do the planning, the movements, how tall should this be?

What angle should this be on the models? And then we would hope that when you put that on the patient’s mouth, because the patient and the models on the articulator was similar, because we use this tool, the facebow. Right? Then we’re going to have to do less adjustment. So if you’re doing a single crown, by time you’ve done a facebow, by time the lab has mounted it, and they might do it wrong, and then they send it back to you, really, what was the point of taking facebow for a single crown?

When you have multiple things going on, and there’s a lot more at stake, then you could be there for a long time adjusting. Therefore, the few minutes it takes to a facebow is now worth it. So it’s a time benefit equation, but it’s also a complexity equation, right? Whereby the facebow gives you a bit more detail. Does that help to answer that question?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, that does. That’s really, really helpful. Yeah. And then I wanted to move a little bit wider. So do you have any, I don’t know if you do have your own clinic or do you work as an associate or?

[Jaz]
I am an associate because I have got quite a driven personality. And I know that if I had my own clinic, that I would pour my 110 percent into it. I would want it to thrive. Like we all do want our clinics to thrive, but I would really like immerse myself into it, just my personality. So if I did that, that would be the death of protrusive. That would be the death of the podcast, the death of education. So I’m a big believer in taking control in your life.

So one way you can take control of your life is by, instead of working as an associate is by being a principal. You’ve taken control of your work environment. You work the hours that you want, you employ the people that you want, you do the dentistry the way that you want from the ground up, right? Which is great.

So I think everyone should have their control by having their own baby. And that could be like their practice. For me, my baby is the podcast and the education side, basically. And so that’s where I get to exert my creativity and control. Whereas other people exhibit their creativity or express their creativity and control through a practice. So I’m a big fan of having something of your own, be it a practice or being another venture. I think it’s a beautiful thing to do.

[Dhruti]
That’s amazing. No, I love that. You’re on the podcast scene. Like I think there are a few British related dental podcasts, but most of them are American. And yeah, I think when I was looking for them, like yours obviously kept on popping up again and again.

And I was like, wow, this is so helpful. And when I was, when I started listening to your podcast, I was in second year. And a lot of the initial podcasts I did have to skip because I didn’t understand what it was about. I didn’t know any of the TMD stuff.

[Jaz]
Which is why you created the student section, right? I don’t know if you’ve seen the last month or so with Emma and stuff. The exclusive students. So I’m really hoping that there’s going to, cause I realized that when I went and started podcasting. It was at a level that was way above students. And I felt bad. And I thought, okay, how can we just have conversations just like these to make things more relatable to students? And I’m hoping that we’re fulfilling that at the moment, including this chat.

[Dhruti]
Definitely. Definitely. And even now that I’ve, like in fourth year, I can follow along to a lot of your podcast now. Even your-

[Jaz]
Amazing, and that’s your growth people. That’s your growth. I think this way is a cool thing that, you know, sometimes when you, and someone called Asif Saeed taught me this, you read a book, right? Imagine you, did you like to read?

[Dhruti]
Yeah.

[Jaz]
So think of a book that you read. Okay. And then a few years later, you read that book again, the same book, right? It hits differently. Like it’s as though it’s a brand new book, right? You notice things, things, certain themes reach out to you more than they did before.

So the book never changed. You changed. And so with occlusion, and so let’s go back to occlusion. Occlusion is not an easy thing to learn because there are so many different factors. Sometimes you hear the same thing, this facebow thing, like maybe today you were like, oh, wow, yeah, I get it now, right? A bit more about facebow.

But I guarantee you three years later, you’ll hear the same thing again. It was like, ah, now it makes a little bit more sense than it did then because you’ve got more experience. You did it a few more times. So because you change, you evolve, things hit differently.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, that’s so true. I should try that again. I’m going to go back and read a book I read like three years ago and see how I feel about it now.

[Jaz]
Make sure it’s not a dental textbook though, yeah?

[Dhruti]
No, no, no, no, thank you. And how do you, because I know you have your wife who’s also a dentist, right?

[Jaz]
That’s right. Community dentist.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. Did you meet in dental school? Did you meet after?

[Jaz]
We were in dental school when we met, but it wasn’t like, so I was in first year, halfway through first year and she was in A levels, end of A levels. And so she met my mom in the Sikh temple and she goes to my mom in the same community, the Afghani Sikh community.

And she met my mom and said, oh, your son, Jaz, he’s doing dentistry at Sheffield, right? And my mom goes, oh yeah, yeah, he’s doing dentistry. And then my wife goes to my mom. My Sim then goes to my mom at that time. She wasn’t my wife. She goes to my mom. Oh, do you think you’ll help me with some, like, you know, which books to get?

Cause I’ve got an offer from Liverpool, that kind of stuff. Anyway, so she adds me on Facebook, right? And then this, this pretty girl just added me on Facebook. I was like, I don’t know who she is. I can’t accept her. Cause if I accept her, she’ll think that I’ll accept any person who adds me. So what I did, I didn’t accept her.

I messaged her on Facebook. I said, who are you? I said, who are you? I don’t recognize you. I think that was a bold, bold move. Right? Anyway, she then tells me a story. I met your mom, blah, blah, blah. And I said. A friend of my mom’s is a friend of mine, except, and so anyway, we had a lot in common, similar parental backgrounds, similar history, culture, that kind of stuff. And so we met in that way and then we, yeah, she was in Liverpool and I was in Sheffield.

[Dhruti]
That’s pretty, so actually my flatmate and one of my best friends is also like Afghani Sikh. So I’ve heard a lot about the community.

[Jaz]
So yeah, but having that similarity was, I think was a backbone of our relationship as well. Like we didn’t know many people in that position in the sort of medical dental sphere, so that was a big commonality that we had.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. There’s another, in London there’s a big community of yours, isn’t there? Is it like Kabuli community?

[Jaz]
We actually yes, that’s it. So we are moving to West London actually. So we’re in Redding. We’re moving to West London. I’ll still be working in Redding, but we’re moving to West London to not really necessarily be closer to the community, but to be closer to my parents and my in-laws to get help with the kids. It’s very difficult doing it alone. So the only parenting hack that exists is living close to grandparents.

That’s it. So, we moved from Singapore. To the UK, to be close to family. And I’m like, we might as well be in Singapore if we’re not with family. So that’s why this summer all being well, we’re moving to West London to be close to family.

[Dhruti]
That’s good. How do you manage that like balance, by the way? Like, do you work, I don’t know, three, four days a week? Is it like you do, how do you sort of compensate that, when you’re putting all into your work and your podcast, how do you then balance it out with your family? Or do you feel like that’s something you’re still working on?

[Jaz]
Oh, it’s never, and it’s always to be worked on, right? It’s a duty to be worked on. It’s a great question. I actually did a whole webinar on this called my productivity secrets revealed, right? And so I talked a whole hour about this. Essentially the foundations of it were this. Remember I said about the importance of having a baby, something to control your creative express.

So this could be your practice or this could be whatever. So for me, it’s the podcast, Protrusive Guidance Network, the Protruserati, serving them. Basically, that’s like my own creation. And that’s what I love to do as well. So how do I balance that? Well, I work three days clinical, three and a half sometimes, because I do some extra clinics.

So three and a half days clinical, which frees up those other days. The other way that I’m able to do the things I’m able to do is, I work a shift pattern, which is very unique, right? And this is not from COVID. The practice I work in has been doing it for 30 plus years. So what this means is this week I was working 8am till 2pm.

So Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. And then next week I’ll be working 2pm till 8pm. So it gives me an entire half a day or thereabouts, to get this stuff done because otherwise it’s impossible. The other thing is I have the whole team behind me basically. So I pay them handsomely and it is because if I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be able to be a father anymore.

What you have to do basically is write down on a piece of paper, your non negotiables, right? So for me, it is my wife, my kids, time in the gym, which unfortunately gets sacrificed now and again when things get really busy. And serving my patients. So all these things, as long as I’m able to stay on top of these things, right?

That’s most important. So how do I free up my time so I can do all those things and run Protrusive? And so yeah, working not full time in clinical. If I was doing 9am to 6pm, five, six days a week, there would be no Protrusive, then maybe not even be a relationship with a family, right? It’s important to have the time for things that are important to you.

So working less hours, having a team to delegate to. Even if it means that it’s at an expense and those are the two most important things. There’s also a few other little nuances, like for example, learning about yourself, what times of the day you are more productive, food wise, what actually serves you better, what food makes you feel good and what makes it, what food makes you feel not so good. So unfortunately pizza doesn’t sit well with me and it’s about self discovery and stuff. So it’s about eating the right things as well, actually funny enough.

[Dhruti]
Wow. That’s really interesting. Yeah, I know. It’s always interesting because I feel like everyone always says, oh, you’re going to miss the time in dental school and you only have like four patients a day or you only see this many, you have an hour and a half, two hours for an appointment. When you get into the real world, it all changes and things like that. And then, it’s like a lot of the dentists always so busy or they’re always burnt out. And what tips do you have for early prevention sort of early burnout prevention? I should say.

[Jaz]
My number one tip, 100%, my number one tip, and I don’t think dentists do this enough, Dhruti, is plan out your entire 12 months in advance, okay, and plan out the weeks that you’re going to take off for holiday. Even if it means you’re not sitting on a plane, like even if it doesn’t, you don’t have to sit on a plane, okay, despite what my wife thinks, you don’t have to sit on a plane to be on holiday, okay.

So, I know, like we’ve already booked up until February 2025, like my holidays, basically. Okay. So I know when I’m off, like next week, I’m only working one clinic because I took time off so I can help my wife with her masters in peds, but also just have a bit of downtime away from patients. So I am a big believer.

So if you wait until you’re burnt out, stop looking for holidays, and then you have to apply for your leave because your patients don’t want to be inconvenienced. You have to give a certain level of notice. It’s too late. So I know that every six to eight weeks, right? I need, even if it’s like a day off, right?

I need to have that, right? So, but more often than not, I’d like to have two, three days off or a week off where I can. And that usually coincides nowadays with half term and kids and stuff. So, so important to plan your breaks regularly. And I’ll echo something like on our little community. One protruserati messaging me saying, look, I’ve been feeling really burnt out recently and I realized because there’s a recent episode I published on stress.

She said, I realized that actually there’s a magic in people. The reason I got into dentistry is because I love people and therefore I need time to reconnect with people, be with more people. So life is not about the destination. Life is not even about the journey. It’s about the people along the way. So how do you get people into it?

Well, it’s your family, it’s important to you, but also it’s about going on those courses where you reconnect with people. The magic of live element is unbeatable. So that’s how I would say to dentists who are burning out, don’t let that happen to you. Make sure you’ve got time booked off and reconnect with people.

[Dhruti]
Oh, that’s pretty sweet.

[Jaz]
And you as well, make sure as a student, you got your downtime. You’ll find it so easy next year. Oh my God, I need to revise this, revise that, revise that. You need to block out some time, but you know what? I’m just going to do the thing that I love to do. That could be working out or that could be surfing, whatever you want to do, right?

You got to have time for that. I’m a hypocrite saying that ’cause when I was in fifth year, I gave up the gym stupidly. I really regret my time as a fifth year. I think I completely mismanaged it. It was a detriment to my health. Yes, I got a hundred percent in my clinical exam. Is it worth it? No. I wish I got 80% and I went to the gym more and I did the final things I wanted to do as a student. Yes. I wish that so a regret, I’m just passing that on.

[Dhruti]
No, that’s so good. It’s so nice that you can share your experiences like that, because I think people do really learn from other people’s experiences and there’s something I’ll definitely take on board for next year.

[Jaz]
Good. Learn from the failures of others. If you do that, you’ll thrive in industry.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Jaz]
And one thing that we were talking about, Dhruti, before we hit the record button is, you mentioned about shadowing. You’ve already done some shadowing and stuff. So, so important. So I think one of the things you alluded to is what can you do? One is one thing you can do as a student to get ahead. I think as a student, if you should reach out to your local clinics or dentists that you respect, or you’ve heard of that, hey, I’m a student, but can I just come and see, like, can I come and learn from you in the practice? That is a powerful, powerful way of learning. So one thing I’ve definitely been doing in my first five years, especially, and I wish I did more of as a student is shadow dentist, shadow, shadow, shadow.

[Dhruti]
That’s interesting because I feel like everyone does that to get into dental school because it’s sort of one of the things that they say, but then during dental school, because we have clinics and stuff that isn’t really talked about much.

I haven’t really had anyone say that you should try and go shadow. I know they say, go do community service, go see if you can get like a placement somewhere. But that’s really interesting. I’ll try and see if I can find someone.

[Jaz]
Didn’t you gain when you did it? Didn’t you gain so much to learn about how patients are talked to the communication aspect of it and what the real world is like? Didn’t you gain so much?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty good. It is nice being closer to the finish line now because it’s a bit more, well, I mean, I know I have another year to go, but it’s weird to think, wow, like four years has already gone so fast. It’s just another year and then it’s out into the world, Dhruti. So it is good to be, to start getting exposed to what’s out there now.

[Jaz]
Well said. And I think, keep going. We wish you all the best. Protruserati are behind you. Dhruti, are you on the Protrusive guidance app yet?

[Dhruti]
No, I was going to get it off to my exams finished, so now I can.

[Jaz]
Excellent. Make sure you get it. And it’s only going to fuel your exams and stuff. So there’s a whole section we have now. Let me, so for those who are listening on Spotify and Apple and stuff, you won’t be able to see this so much, but I’m going to talk you through it. So it is a section called Protrusive Guidance is the name of the app.

Basically, you can access it on your laptop or access it on your phone. And basically, I encourage all students to come and join basically. And there’s a whole forum on their student forum. You can share your thoughts, cases, what you want to request from the community, there’s a crush your exam section, which we’re going to put the different notes based on the episodes we’re doing.

And the new thing, which is student clinical videos. So is there a full checkup that you posted, a tricky rubber dam case, and this is all brand new. So, I’m adding videos as we go along, but I would definitely say join it, it’s free, why wouldn’t you? And I’m hoping to create a network of students where you can just help each other out.

Like I can’t be there helping everyone, but to create that network of the nicest and geekiest dentists, but also dentists students in the world is the dream, so make sure you join Dhruti, get involved, request those things that you want to, I’ve got a camera on my loop. What do you want to see?

[Dhruti]
Yeah, that’s amazing. No. Cause I remember, I think it was the episode with Emma. You were talking about like, you were going to film how to do quicker checkups or something, and then he said you were going to film one.

[Jaz]
Just a routine checkup. So we did it. There’s a whole 16 minute video there of like the entire checkup uncut. Like every word I say, everything that you’re, I’m seeing through my loupes, you get to see.

[Dhruti]
Wow. That’s amazing. Oh, and the question about loupes. I bought some Orascoptic loupes, but then I was just like asking people in my year and I’ve. There was such like, there’s so many mixed opinions on loupes in dental school. What do you think about loupes in dental school?

[Jaz]
Totally go for it. The sooner you get loupes, the better and well done for getting a really good brand as well. I think it’s great. It’s one of those things, my philosophy on money in life is, if it’s something they’re going to be using every day or it’s really important and like you can use a lot.

Buy the best you can, right? If you can afford it, I think do it. So buy the best you can. And loupes is definitely in this category. I have three pairs. I have three pairs of loupes. So one I use all the time. One is the backup for that one. And one is the backup of the backup because I refuse, I refuse to go into work without loupes. Like ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

[Dhruti]
Do you have refractive loupes?

[Jaz]
I don’t because, damn it. Just when I bought that third pair, refractive literally became a thing like a week after.

[Dhruti]
Would your next pair be refractive loupes?

[Jaz]
When one of them has to go in the bin, then yeah, I think I’d give that a go. I think it makes sense. I see a lot of people wearing them. It looks pretty cool. I see the benefits, but I haven’t had back issues yet. Fingers crossed. I don’t need the refractives just yet, but hey, I think that’s a smart choice as well. But you don’t have to go refractives and pay that extra price tag as a student. Start with any loupes. What magnification are yours?

[Dhruti] 3.5 because that’s what we were told like is the basic, but I know some people were trying to get like five mag and things like that.

[Jaz] 3.5 is good as a student. I think it gives you a broader field of view, which is great. And then eventually, you’ll go up to five and seven and stuff, but that’s okay. 3.5 is a great thing to start with. I think it should be illegal to get through dental school without loupes. So I’m extremely, extremely pro loupes.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. I know you said that about your endos and stuff. You shouldn’t be allowed to do endos without loupes in front of your previous episode.

[Jaz]
A hundred percent. I mean, I see kids, I do kids fillings with like five times loupes. Like, I do everything.

[Dhruti]
That’s so good. Is there anything you wanted to know about how dental school is now, like compared to when you were in dental school?

[Jaz]
I recently interviewed Muhamed Abu Basha and also Emma as well. So I’ve got a good insight now. It’s been so lovely to reconnect with students, but the one thing that I want to ask you is, nowadays, when you guys find it like you guys are burning out, you guys are getting stressed. Where do you turn to for help? What are the kinds, what’s the support network that you have available?

[Dhruti]
Obviously the uni, like all unis have their own sort of well being support network, things like that. Even a lot of our supervisors they’re good to talk to. But I think personally me and my friends, like we just, because right now I live with dental students as well. So we just sort of run to each other. I think if you really need to, I think taking sort of a little day off clinic or a little day off something, like not all the time, but once in a while just helps like a mental health day almost, or we just nowadays, like we’ll just end up going, we’ll like go to the beach, go on a walk, something like that, it’s easier to do in Cornwall because there’s a lot of just greenery around, we’ll even like escape to Plymouth or escape to like a bigger city.

And just sort of leave clinic be and things like that. But yeah, I feel like definitely friends are a big, big way and you need to get that support, family, just going like long FaceTimes with family. Sometimes you just need to put on like a movie, just put on a movie, just grab a few drinks and just relax.

So I think it’s more like that in terms of the network you have around you. Obviously there’s also wellbeing things in the university. There’s also extra support. I do a lot of like meditation. I do a lot of like yoga, pilates, things like that. That helps me. Journaling. I journal as well. I think everyone should journal.

[Jaz]
Very good. I think everyone should journal. I’m speaking as a hypocrite. I don’t journal as much as I want to, but I mean like meditation. I use the Balance app and I, and I love that so much.

[Dhruti]
I love Balance as well.

[Jaz]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s great. I wanted to ask that cause I just want to hear it from you. Cause I think it’s a good message for students out there. So that will give us some ideas. And once again, you mentioned friends and it comes back to people. We are in a people business, so if you don’t like people, then you’ll probably go into oral microbiology or what the hell are you doing in dentistry kind of thing, right?

So, maybe reconnect with your love of people and the whole, the primitive. Tribal beings that we are. We always crave those human interactions. So sometimes you just need to have more of those.

[Dhruti]
And another thing, like talking about even your platform and other things like that, even platforms like Reddit, sometimes when I’m having a really tough day, I just like Googling like silly things on Reddit or like even in the dental forums.

And like, there’ll be a lot of people on there complaining about like how tough of a day they had, even other students who’ve been like, oh, my cases weren’t badly today. it’s not like, I mean, it’s sort of negativity, but It’s nice to know that you are alone.

[Jaz]
Misery loves company.

[Dhruti]
Yeah, it is nice to just go on there and be like, you know what? I’m not alone. A lot of people are struggling with this. So yeah, I would say, if there isn’t anyone immediately around you that you could just go into, then it’s good just to go on forums. Even your Protrusive Guidance forum, a lot of advice.

[Jaz]
Any community of practice, whether it’s Protrusive Guidance, Reddit, wherever it is, basically some Facebook groups. There’s a lot of support stuff out there. So, if you don’t have, if you’re not able to meet the needs in other ways, then there’s also these communities that online as well.

So well said. Dhruti, thanks so much for coming up in this chat. It’s nice. These as always well done for being so proactive. I really respect that in you. I think you can go very far in life and I wish you all the best with your final, final year. If you need any help from us in the community, make sure you reach out on Protrusive Guidance.

Message us, post us. Keep telling us how things are going. Any challenges do you have? There’s so many caring, loving dentists on there, right? Even if it’s not me. Like so many, like great guys and girls on there who just want to give back and they want to help. So make sure you reach out for help. Don’t go through it alone. There’s a whole community behind you. Okay.

[Dhruti]
Yeah. And hopefully I’ll see you one day as a dentist, maybe.

[Jaz]
Of course, of course. Yeah, it’s a small world. We’ll see.

Well, there we have it, guys. Thanks so much for listening all the way to the end. This episode is not eligible for CPD. Most of our episodes are. So if you’re a qualified dentist and CE or CPD certificate, you just have to answer a few questions on the quiz. If you’re in a paid plan of Protrusive.

Of course, Protrusive Guidance is actually free. Like this is a free app that you can download and you can get access to the community. And if you’re a student, you get access to all those areas that I discussed with Dhruti. So make sure you join and share it with your student friends.

I really wish I had something like this when I was a student. And let me tell you, the dentists on Protrusive Guidance are the nicest and geekiest guys and girls in the world. So be sure to join them. The website again is www. protrusive. app or you can just go ahead and download the app from the app store or Android.

Hope you enjoyed all those themes. What was your favorite part? If you’re able to comment below either on Protrusive Guidance or on YouTube, please let me know. I’d love to read it. That’s all for now. And I’ll catch you same time, same place next week. Bye for now.