How I Stopped Being a Dentist
For those contemplating leaving patient care behind
I was a senior in high school when I fell in love with the idea of being a healthcare provider. About twenty years later, I wanted a divorce.
Let me be clear: I still love my chosen profession of dentistry. It was my honor and privilege to serve my patients, the majority of whom were lovely. Colleagues became lifelong friends. I got to start a business from scratch with one of those friends and we created jobs for talented folks who helped us figure it out as we plodded along. But somewhere, somehow, I got burned out from patient care.
There’s a proper definition of “burn out” (I’ve discussed that here), but my armchair one is a sustained state of the negatives of the job outweighing the positives. For many healthcare workers, the past several years (even before COVID) have seen a mounting number of stresses (source) that can eclipse the passion they’ve felt for their work. In my case, however, I was actually handling the stress fine; I was just increasingly enjoying my extracurricular activities way more than patient care.
I’ve been dabbling in non-clinical activities since dental school. I wasn’t even a dentist yet but my general inability to sit still compelled me to keep searching for other ways to occupy what little free time I had. Yes, I live with ADD, and maybe that’s a big part of it, but I also just get bored doing the same thing every day. I watch these YouTube videos of artisans who dedicate their entire lives to something— repairing watches or sewing bespoke suits— and I’m just gobsmacked at their never-ending passion. They are true masters of their craft; they’ve invested their 10,000 hours, as Gladwell would say. I have the greatest respect for my colleagues who continually push themselves to be masters of their dental craft, but it just wasn’t for me.
So if you’re a healthcare worker who’s fed up with the stresses of your career, or you just can’t sit still like me, here are a few ways to earn a living that don’t involve patient care. I’ll be writing about each of these in more detail in the future, so this is just an overview.
(1) Academics
If you’re considering going back to teach then I have good news. Many healthcare programs are in desperate need of teaching help. The bad news is that they may not pay so well.
I volunteered a half day a week for a couple of years at my alma mater dental school. I received no pay nor any benefits. I did it because I had the time early on in my career and I thought it would be fun. It was! But as my other pursuits became more successful, it was not a difficult decision to drop the half day of work that was good for my soul but not so good for my bank account.
(2) Lecturer
Only a rare few can turn professional lecturing into a full-time career, but for the rest of us it can be a great way to get out of the clinic and supplement our income. Healthcare providers need continuing education credits to maintain their licenses, so there are numerous forums for providers who can make a topic entertaining and informative.
This was my first non-clinical passion. I had my first opportunities getting in front of audiences when I was involved in the American Student Dental Association while still in school. Yes, it’s nerve-wracking the first several times, but I became addicted to the rush that comes immediately afterwards. The key for me was to find a niche topic—not the most popular subject that was already crowded with speakers who were better and more famous than me. It takes years of grinding, building relationships with manufacturers and with meeting planners, but eventually you can get some real momentum going. I’m still doing quite a bit of lecturing today and I still love it.
(3) Key Opinion Leader (KOL)
A KOL is a subject matter expert that is called upon by the industry for special events or activities. Many KOLs are also influential in their profession, perhaps as speakers on the lecture circuit, respected academics, or frequent publishers. A company may ask you to be on an advisory board and pay you a small honorarium. Or perhaps they will bring you on as a short-term consultant for a project.
I was a KOL for several companies over the years and it was a blast. It’s not steady income, but it can lead to exciting work that will look great on your resume. Some highlights for me:
Rubbing elbows with the legends of my profession at company retreats
Learning how to consult on material and technology development
Appearing in a U.S. television commercial for WaterPik
Appearing in a Chinese television commercial for Oral-B (crazy story… I’ll have to tell you sometime)
(4) Consultant
This is similar to a KOL except at this stage you’re now working for a consulting company (perhaps your own) to take on more comprehensive and ongoing relationships with your clients. You might advise a large or small healthcare organization on how to improve patient outcomes or improve its bottom line, or you might offer guidance to a manufacturer who is creating a new product.
I worked with a dental-specific consulting group for several years as a side gig. One client was an established developer of an electronic health record platform and I mostly gave feedback about market positioning and helped optimize user interface. Another client was a start-up looking to bring a product to market. It’s fascinating stuff and it can pay quite well.
(5) Industry
You know who makes great salespeople for healthcare materials and equipment? Healthcare providers. If you want to leave patient care immediately, becoming a salesperson in your industry is likely the fastest way to get full-time work. Depending on your education and experience, you might even quality for other industry positions, such as research, quality control, professional relations… the options are legion. Just look up a company in your sector on LinkedIn and you’ll get a sense.
In my case, I was Chief Editor of an industry publication part-time while I still worked in my practice. It was one of the happiest times in my career. When I wasn’t in my office, I would review submitted articles, plan feature stories, travel with our sales team to secure advertising, and hit the biggest conferences to film video content. Part of the reason I got this job was I had started my own blog years before and had built it to the point that publishers were taking notice.
(6) Administrative
This can also be a relatively quick exit from patient care, depending on your education and experience and, of course, where you are employed. A nurse at a large hospital will have way more options in front of them than a dental hygienist working in a small private practice. But if you want to trade in the blood and gauze for spreadsheets and slide decks, then this is the career for you!
You don’t necessarily need an MBA or a masters in health administration, but it can certainly help. What you do need is some reason why a higher-up should put you into a management position. It’s a big transition to go from doing a thing well to leading a team to do that thing well.
This is what I’m currently doing. I’ve been the Chief Dental Officer of a large group dental practice for almost four years and I’ve never been more engaged, professionally. My primary duties are to oversee the hiring and development of all clinical personnel, ensure they practice at or above the standards of care, and to make decisions on our clinical materials and technology. I’m not kidding about the spreadsheets and slide decks thing; these are your new surgical instruments.
I do not have an MBA or a masters in health administration, but I did have a 16-year career of doing the first five things on this list. I also invested a ton of time in the single most important activity that will jumpstart any one of these pathways for you: networking.
Treat networking like a resource. You need to make deposits before you can ever hope to make meaningful withdrawals. I went to tradeshows on my own dime, did lectures for free, ghost wrote articles to bail out a colleague… all deposits that built up over time. Perhaps my most successful networking, and the largest investment I made, was volunteering in the American Dental Association. I was very active for about a decade, taking on leadership positions at the local, state, and national levels. All of this work built up my management experience and exposed me to thousands of new connections, and it was truly great fun to do it.
If you’re thinking of leaving patient care behind, I hope one or more of these pathways sparked your curiosity. Please drop me a note if you want to share your story or ask me questions. I wish you the best in your next chapter.