Benefits to being involved in the dental field include the following:
• Satisfaction. Most dentists find great personal satisfaction in caring for their patients, and they enjoy the intellectual stimulation and renewed awareness of dentistry given the growing body of research linking oral health to overall health.
• Flexibility. Most dentists in private practice can set their hours and follow a predictable schedule, which enhances quality of life and makes it easier to plan vacations and other events.
• Security. People will always need help with dental hygiene. The population continues to grow, and as dentists who have been practicing since the 1960s and 1970s retire, you may find that now is a good time to enter the dental field.
Being a dentist has become more lucrative than many other types of medicine, in part because dentistry is not subject to the managed care issues and federal funding reductions that have increased the costs and decreased the profits for other types of primary care medicine such as family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics. According to the American Dental Education Association, the average income for a general dentist in the United States in 2003 was $198,000.
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