This summer, I was fortunate to attend a dental internship program offered by our school. It was a unique experience, and I can’t wait to share details about it!

To be honest, I’ve never thought of pursuing dentistry in the future. Since college apps are hitting and I’m still quite unsure of where I want to go and who I want to become, I decided to attend this internship out of pure curiosity to broaden my understanding of the dentistry field and to explore my career options.

This internship is designed for students to get a brief outlook of the dentistry field, therefore it only lasted for a short two weeks. During the two weeks, attendees are assigned to two different clinics with each clinic lasting for a week. I was assigned to the headquarters of ABC Dental Alliance for the first week. Despite having heard of this dental clinic for a long time, the headquarters is truly eye-widening. It is a 13-story building all to themselves with a clinic, a gym, a professional conference room, a cafeteria, a mechanical laboratory, a minibar, and an administrative office. I never knew that a dental clinic can operate on such a large scale. There, I learned various common techniques and equipment used in the dentistry field while fully utilizing the resources they have. Being an intern in such a large business was a fairly lavish experience. We were assigned a mentor to guide us through the entire week as well as doctors from different departments every day to give us a short lecture on the outlook of different branches of dentistry. Various hands-on activities as well as first-hand surgical observation are interspersed between the lectures for us to get a more realistic feel of the dentistry field. One activity that I particularly enjoyed was the molding of fake teeth. We had to mix gypsum powder and water in a particular ratio in order to yield the desired viscosity ideal for molding. I have seen the molding material a few years ago while getting my braces done but never quite understood how it works, therefore it feels very special to be able to revisit it from a dental intern perspective. Another activity that absolutely amazed me was the production of a fake tooth from 3D design software. The precision of the software allows the mechanic to edit everything from the location of the ridges to the precise shape of the teeth. Once the design is done, it is exported to a grooving machine. The finished teeth look so real and delicate. I even got to take one home as a souvenir!

However, quite obviously, ABC is an exception as most dental clinics do not own an entire building to themselves. This fairly lavish intern experience in the headquarters of ABC, in a sense, made me lose a sense of reality, so I initially found some difficulties trying to catch up with the second dental clinic’s schedule. Unlike ABC where we get to play around with various equipment and sit in conference rooms for lectures, the second clinic I was assigned to was a small clinic with only two doctors and a lot of patients. I often have to stand around the entire day watching the doctors conducting the diagnosis while quickly setting up the medical chairs before the patients arrive. I had to pick up a lot of things myself as the doctors do not have time to constantly check on me nor teach me the common techniques like the mentor did to me in ABC. However, the large influx of patients and the fast pace of the clinic instead allowed me to gain a lot of practical experience. Unlike ABC where I could only observe the operations from a projector screen, in the second clinic, I got to observe a lot more operations and in a much closer distance as well as in greater detail. The doctors are very nice people as they often use their minimal amount of free time to explain to me anything I just saw and answer any questions I have. This made me cherish the opportunity to ask questions more because I don’t have a mentor anymore who I can go up to and ask questions at any time.

These two completely different experiences sum up my two weeks of dental internship. The experiences both clinics offered me were unique in their own way, and I liked both of them. I really appreciate the school for giving students this internship opportunity, and I definitely feel like becoming a more knowledgeable person after participating in this experience. I got to know the uses of various basic equipment that I used to see back then when I was getting my braces done. I got a deeper understanding of the periodontal disease, what it looks like as well as how to treat it. I got to see the newest water laser disinfection equipment used for root canal treatment. I got to know the various psychological approaches pediatric dentists take to soothe children’s tension. I got to experience first-hand the technological integration of anesthesiology and dentistry, where dentists work with anesthetists, using target control infusion monitored by the computer to anesthetize patients into a sleeping state where they’re still able to follow commands. All of these really broadened my understanding of the dentistry field and made me see my future better. In fact, although this internship experience taught me a lot, I have to admit that dentistry isn’t really my thing. I’m more interested in becoming a doctor that gives treatment for the whole body, not just the mouth. Throughout the process, I found the biotechnologies behind various equipment more interesting than dentistry itself. The integration and collaboration of different branches of medical science also made me more determined to pursue a degree in the medical field. Overall, I have to say that this is a really successful internship experience, and I genuinely enjoyed it a lot. 🙂