Dr Sharif Islam, a GDP from north London, was highly commended for his entry to our Writing Competition, with the judges finding that his approach to saving dentistry was a unique way to approach the subject

Broken. Desolated. Sombre.

And that’s just you. The profession itself, complex, demanding and yet still rewarding and stimulating, is challenging you in ways you never anticipated when you ticked that box on a careers day decades ago.

But the job can be so addictive. The usefulness, the craft, and the generous renumeration. Knowing that for all the teeth you have restored, you have enhanced the health of just as many mouths by removing them too. Even the saviour complex, niche that it is, is fed by the cocktail of your patients’ adulation and gratitude.

You are privileged to work with amazing colleagues whose collective diligence amplifies both your results and your reputation, and whose compassion cradles you during the occasional failure. They pamper and provide for you, coddle and clean for you, and inflate your ego and self-worth for far less pay than they surely deserve.

Your patients are each unique and fascinating, even that one whose colourful metaphors are only tempered by a mouthful of alginate or a gag reflex. They are so thankful for your efforts, and even your presence, perhaps having travelled on an epic journey just to find you.

And there it is. Dentistry, like all complex services and heavily gritted teeth, is fractured by its issues, foremost of which is the dearth of it for so many. Less a profession now than a political football, it is subject to policies that are more about chasing headlines than serving a moral imperative. Its unavailability on the NHS may reflect woeful funding but also says as much about what government values in their overall budget. That, despite being one of the most expensive forms of healthcare to deliver, our citizens’ ability to smile, eat and communicate is worth less than 2% of all healthcare spending in the UK. After all, it’s not like those drawers full of handpieces and composites actually cost money…

Couple that to a population that resents paying over the odds. Spending on entertainment, clothes and holidays is guaranteed by desire whereas spending on dentistry is considered offensive by need.

You’re not just a dentist anymore. Now, you have to be a politician, fielding questions about the lack of provision, the expense of treatment and how one can acquire a row of fridge freezers in their mouth to show off on Instagram. All while fending off a hostile public profile spiked with a rabid complaints culture that thinks you’re an avaricious sociopath.

Your pay is decent enough that you can afford a golf club membership to offset the damage from years of leaning forward on a saddle chair eight hours a day. But the spine is still contracting into a desultory stoop. The eyes are strained and the knuckles grate, hoping to surpass a TMJ utterly bereft of synovial fluid from endless nights of parafunction. The neck has shared its ache with the trapezius below, who in turn has gifted it to the rhomboids and latissimus dorsi, a curious exercise in muscular ‘pay-it-forward’ that certainly doesn’t feel as generous as it sounds.

And that’s when you realise that when you truly value something you have to let it go. To free yourself of the stress, the anguish and the rush. To relieve the burden this profession and all of its ailments have placed upon you. To have the time to study something else and pursue other interests. To offer your patients a newfound enthusiasm etched upon an unfurrowed brow. Those hands belong to a human being and that’s ultimately what dentistry is made of.

How do you save dentistry? By saving yourself.

Our Writing Competition hub page will feature all the winners and highly commended entries. Keep checking the page for updates