Preparatory assistant in a practice or clinic? How to make your assistantship a success
The approaching assistantship raises many questions: Where is the best place to complete the assistantship? How can I get the most out of the preparatory assistantship? And where will I gain the greatest amount of knowledge during the assistantship?
Of course, there is no general answer to these questions. We would therefore like to list some of the advantages and disadvantages of working as an assistant in a university clinic or in a practice so that you can get a better idea of which working environment suits you best.
For general information, check out our blog post: Help with Assistantships – A Guide
Assistantship at the University Hospital:
Advantages of being employed at a university dental clinic:
One advantage of completing your time as a preparatory assistant at the university hospital is, for example, the scientific and professional exchange with colleagues.
The clinic offers you a familiar environment that you already know from your time as a student. This can make it easier for you to settle into your new field of work.
You will often see more complicated cases in the clinic and learn to deal with them without the time pressure that comes with working in a dental practice.
A further advantage is that the salary is regulated by collective agreements and is usually higher than that of colleagues working in practice.
Disadvantages of being employed at a university dental clinic:
You are now sitting on the other side and are supposed to evaluate the work of your former classmates. You have to appear confident and give helpful tips, even though you were sitting in the same place just a few months ago. This can lead to uncertainty, especially at the beginning.
Two doctors, three opinions - this can also happen in a clinical environment. This is where many characters come together who often have different work philosophies.
The actual treatment time is often less than it would be in practice, since teaching and research also take up part of your working time
Other decision factors:
You are usually permanently employed in one department, which can mean that your knowledge of other areas of dentistry remains rather limited. If you want to work as a general dentist after your assistantship, this can be a disadvantage. However, if you know that you want to specialize, you can get a head start and gain relevant experience and attend training courses and seminars.
When you supervise clinical courses, you will often have to clean up what your students have messed up. This is not always pleasant or easy, but it can help you learn how to deal with difficult and stressful situations.
If you have colleagues with whom you don't get along very well, or whose way of working doesn't suit yours, there is usually the possibility of avoiding those people in the clinic.
Practice:
Benefits of working in a dental practice:
In many practices, you get valuable insights into the business aspects that come with being self-employed: billing, sales, marketing and patient management. This can be very helpful if you plan to become self-employed one day, or to find out whether self-employment is right for you.
You will find that many treatment methods are different in practice than what you learned in the clinic. In practice, you learn to work economically and quickly deliver good results to the patient.
You will learn about alternatives to what you are used to and can take the best with you for your future.
It is worth checking during the trial period whether the treatment philosophy of your future boss suits you.
Some bosses or colleagues are great teachers who accompany, support and coach you on your way to becoming a confident and experienced therapist.
Disadvantages of being employed in a dental practice:
The quality of training in dental practices varies greatly. It can happen that you are only allowed to carry out assistant tasks and thus hardly learn anything in terms of craftsmanship. There is an interesting report about this in Der Spiegel, which you can find in the sources.
You often hear of young professionals who feel completely alone when they start their careers and are thrown in at the deep end. They are expected to be highly independent right from the start of their careers, which can quickly become overwhelming.
Good practice can be recognized, for example, by the satisfaction and consistency of the staff. It is worth paying attention to this during trial work and doing research on websites.
Especially at the beginning, it can sometimes be quite stressful in the practice, as the treatment volume is different to what you are used to in the clinic. Suddenly you have a lot of patients per day and are expected to complete endodontic treatments or preparations in the shortest possible time, even though you still lack the routine.
The average salary for a preparatory assistant in a dental practice is around €2,500 gross when starting out, which is lower than the salary that colleagues in the university clinic receive.
In summary, these are just experiences that we or our colleagues have had in the respective fields of work. You can find out for yourself what is right for you individually and we hope that our list can help you make a decision. If you feel like you are in the wrong place during your assistantship, try to talk to your boss. Talk about what bothers you, because that is the only way your boss and colleagues have the chance to change something. If nothing changes, don't be afraid to change jobs. The preparation time is there to make you a professional therapist and therefore you should feel comfortable during the time and have the feeling that you are developing further.
Sources:
Apobank. This is what employed dentists earn. Last accessed on 07.02.2022 from https://www.apobank.de/
Gontek, Florian. Starting a career as a dentist. "Apart from sucking up saliva and sweeping the floor, I didn't do much." (12.08.2021) last accessed on 07.02.2022 from https://www.spiegel.de/
Marburger Bund. Collective agreement for doctors at university hospitals. Last accessed on February 7, 2022 from https://www.marburger-bund.de/
