After nearly 3 years of studying text books and pre-clinicals as a dental student, we begin the clinical postings. As exciting and thrilling as it sounds, there is a bit of hesitation as to how to approach the patient.
The pre-clinicals involve working on dental models that are steady, stagnant and don’t react or even present with painful symptoms. It is much easier to deal with as we only focus on the procedure and its outcome.
Clinical postings pose an entirely different set of challenges. Clinical skill is a marinade of good communication, strong clinical knowledge, human understanding, empathy, patience, focus and ethics. It is about putting to use our theoretical learning in to real life situation. As a student starting his/her clinical postings, there is always a feeling of nervousness. A nervousness that comes out of the fear of not being able to diagnose well, not asking the right question, being judged by the patients, and of course by the faculty for making mistakes. Its extremely important to focus and this requires surpassing all these thoughts that lead to the fear of “what if I don’t know anything.” But as we go steer through all of this and gain patient’s trust, that smile of gratitude transforms our anxiety into confidence.
I believe most of us went through this phase during our clinical postings back in college. Please share your idea of how you got through it and help other budding professionals deal with it.
MBH/AB