From time to time, one often hears the question, “if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? In the big ‘classroom of life’, we might not do too much differently but in the ‘classroom of practicing dentistry’, I think most of us might agree that we would have done it differently.

 

I don’t revisit this question too often (too painful) except when I’m talking with a recent dental school graduate and they want to pick my brain wanting to know how I started and what advice I might share with them. In 1982, local banks in Austin were not making loans to new general dental graduates starting a practice from scratch. One either bought an existing practice or became an associate. There were very few private dental clinics and only a couple city or state local dental clinic operations to work in.

 

I chose the associate route and that was a good move for me. I learned a lot from that working environment and it paid the bills. Ultimately I ended up where not all, but most of us general practice dentists want to be, in a solo practice.

 

There are a few things I learned from the ‘classroom’ and if I had to do it again, I would have done the following:

 

 

If you sat down and thought about it, you yourself could come up with a list of what you might have done differently. I think it would be good to share our lists with others, especially the young dentists. Being vulnerable can be a bit scary, but a great way to share wisdom. What does your list look like?

 

Wayne Radwanski

President CADS 2008-09