How You Start Your Career After Dental School

We have already provided detailed advice for collecting the qualifications that you need in order to become a dentist. Your time in education should culminate in studying for four or five years at dental school; however, in our other article, we didn’t quite clarify the steps you should undertake to get your dental career up and running once you have graduated. Here’s the journey you should embark on…

There are just a few more hoops to jump through…

As we have made clear previously, undertaking the necessary education and training to become a dentist is a very time-consuming and financially expensive endeavour. Even once you have left dental school, you aren’t yet ready to walk into a dental practice. There are other stages that you still have to navigate, though you can at least take comfort from finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

The typical next move after graduating from dental school is registering with, in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service or, in the Republic of Ireland, the Health Service Executive. You could choose to set up your own practice rather than join the NHS or HSE, but most aspiring dentists yet to enter the profession could find this strategy too daunting.

Anyway, whether you are eager to enter the public or private sector, you will not be permitted to practice without first registering with, in the UK, the General Dental Council or, in the ROI, the Dental Council. Both organisations, for their respective states, keep registers of working dentists and set standards for the dental profession.

That’s what you have to do… but what do you want?

Those are the technical details of how to bridge the gap between leaving dental school and becoming a fully qualified practicing dentist. However, it isn’t just technical details that you should be accounting for. You should also put your mind to more personal concerns which could have significant practical implications for simply how you do your job.

You should, for example, keep in mind where in the country you’d like to live and work; what your partner, family or friends would favour; health issues affecting you or people you know; and personal interests you would like to pursue, both in and outside of dentistry. All of these factors and more should be weighed up carefully to help you to discern what exact dentistry jobs you should apply for.