Dentist Able To Treat Patients Too Soon

It just amazes me how easily a person can attend dental school, graduate and immediately be given the opportunity to tear into a person's mouth, especially a child's.

No wonder so many go to dental school instead of medical school or take the time to attend another couple of years of college to actually become a pediatric dentist.  And explains why dentistry has become such a joke, which it shouldn't be since oral health is so important.

In medical school it's years before you are allowed to attack the care of a patient on your own, to become a dentist and treat patients is a piece of cake in comparison.  No, I'm not saying it's easy by any means nor do I think I could do it, however from what I've heard many Small Smiles dentist are doing I'm not so sure my 5 years old grandchild might not do a bit better job.

What bothers me is the fact these dentist pass a test, (yes they actually do have to do some work on actual teeth before graduation but so does a cosmetologist so that doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot) then left to roam from state to state simply applying for a licenses to practice and after a few questions from state dental boards are granted those licenses.  And unless there are complaints (and a whole lot of them and sometimes this mean little) they are left to run loose.  This is why filing complaint is so important!  If not you, then who? 

I know from doing all my research into this very few dentists licenses are actually revoked and in most instances one state will slap them on the wrist, maybe even two slaps, the next state knows this but will grant them a licenses anyway as if there is some dentist shortage or something.

This just seems wrong to me.  There is a bit of oversight of dentists.  But nothing near enough when looking at how places like Small Smiles, Kool Smiles and the like have been allowed to open renegade dental offices.  Many of these clinics have licenses hanging in their offices of dentists the staff have never seen or heard of, let alone any of them actually working on patients.

Of course many of the staff don't understand why these licenses are hanging there (it's to skirt the laws of particular states) but I encourage them to report this behavior to your state dental boards.  If there is a dentist licenses hanging in your office and you've never seen this dentist this should raise some red flags and I hope that you ask yourself why.

Anyway, states need to be taking a much closer look at their dental laws, rules and regulation and put a high powered microscope on their dental boards.  It's time for individuals to take some action here and let your law makers know there is a python in the wood pile and clean up this mess.

That is one thing I can thank companies like Small Smiles for, their tyranny bringing to light much that is wrong and what needs to be cleaned up and I don't mean tomorrow, I mean last week.