Learning for life: A new year

A brief "commercial break” from the Board Series… and also a little bit of perspective in the midst of a busy/hectic/stressful month in practice.

I started my position as a maxillofacial prosthodontist back in July 2019. My roles are to not only care for patients and collaborate care in a multidisciplinary fashion, but to also care and foster the minds and experiences of future specialists as an educator.

The past 6-ish months have been quite the experience with the more or less moving out of the role of “trainee” to the “trainer”. As opposed to being mentored, I am the one mentoring. It’s both a gratifying and challenging role to take on.

Mentorship was and is essential to development of one’s foundational knowledge, skillsets, and aspirations. Especially in a field as small, yet complex and long-to-train-for, I find that maxillofacial prosthodontics relies on mentors to inspire learners to join.

With that said, I have had various teaching experiences and patient care includes education. Teaching itself isn’t necessarily a new experience, but I do feel that the responsibility carries more weight in that my actions, my philosophies, and my knowledge have more reverberations than I have ever realized before. I never quite grasped or maybe realized this until I came into my current position.

The patient care aspect was not a huge leap as my training experiences were heavily based in clinical practice, but it is challenging to facilitate care in an indirect manner. I’ve been told many a time (and heard) that while training an individual to master a certain hand skillset is doable - the act of providing care, training a person to actually care - have the empathy, motivation, and proactivity to make a difference, is an entirely different matter.

As the new year (and decade) begins and I look forward, I reminisce on how and what my mentors did, said, and taught me. The main idea is the sense of understanding the privilege that I (we) have to be entrusted by , essentially, a stranger, for his or her care. Not only care in only the time of the appointments, but also his or her livelihood.

Maxillofacial prosthodontic care imparts changes to the intangibles. Like, the notion of being able to smile without preoccupation about others’ perceiving something is different (or wrong). The ease in being able to choose a dish to eat because it is what he or she wants to eat as opposed to the only thing that they are capable of eating. The lack of avoidance of talking over the phone because the person on the other end of the line cannot understand him or her.

My first encounter with an obturator was back when I was a third year pre-doctoral student. I was completing an externship in a General Practice Residency (GPR) program outside of my home state. I chose this particular experience to learn what a GPR actually is, but I also just wanted to get out of the confines of the same ole school building, same ole house setting, and maybe squeeze in a vacation.

I don’t remember the exact circumstances of the moment I saw the obturator. But I do very much remember how I felt when I both visually and audibly experienced the differing states of the patient with and without the prosthesis. The faculty attending himself was not a specialist, but he was all that these patients had to provide this service and he was doing so for many, many years simply because he cared and wanted to provide care for them.

Although my time with this individual was limited, he did spark in me something I never envisioned in my path within dentistry. And to that point, all my mentors throughout all points of my career (thus far) did and do that. They light up a region of my life’s map that was previously uncharted, unwritten, unknown.

I recognize that while mentorship opens up paths, it is also an exercise of trust. My mentors entrust me with the responsibility in making the step forward independently. Ultimately, I am the one who makes the choice of where I go. And whatever step I take, my mentors have followed in the midst to provide guidance when I stumble, hesitate, or go astray. But, positively, I can contribute back to my mentors’ knowledge - building upon the base that they helped construct within me.

In this long-winded blog, which started with exploring the big question of how do I help trainees, I’m concluding with an understanding that mentoring doesn’t actually mean or need to result in making a mentee think a certain way. It’s an encircling relationship between inspiration and aspiration between both mentor and mentees. It’s a Venn diagram of sorts - as multiple mentors impact mentees and paths crisscross and overlap. It’s a testament to how beautifully expanse but intertwined the world can be.

So, in moving forward into 2020 (can’t believe it’s already halfway into February!), I will try to carry this close and be mindful of the new road I tread and hopefully those who will not only follow, but forge new paths.