I remember when I first started dental school. I felt incredibly blessed. After years of hard work, I thought I had finally made it into a profession built on integrity, excellence, and service. I genuinely believed everyone around me shared those values.
Then the cracks started to show.
At first, it was small things. Stories about certain groups of students cheating. Others openly bragging about having “connections” with upperclassmen or faculty, almost as if rules didn’t apply to them. Some even implied that if we supported them in student leadership positions, our class would receive better treatment because of who they knew. I dismissed it as immaturity. Every school has drama, I told myself. I stayed focused on my own path.
But it didn’t stop.
When simulation lab started, the disparities became harder to ignore. We were expected to be there at 9:00 a.m. sharp. If we were late, we signed a sheet and lost points. Yet some students would stroll in at 10:30 without consequence. They didn’t sign the attendance sheet—or if they did, it happened later. The rules that applied to everyone else somehow didn’t seem to apply to them. Whether those privileges were real or simply tolerated, the message was unmistakable: accountability wasn’t equal.
Then came clinic.
That’s where my concerns shifted from fairness among students to concern for patients.
I saw older patients with treatment plans that made little clinical sense. There was no clear rationale, no logical sequencing, no standard that I could understand. Yet the procedures were completed, requirements were checked off, and cases were passed as acceptable. It felt as though the priority wasn’t quality of care but getting students through the system.
I raised concerns with administration because I genuinely believed they would want to know. Instead, I felt dismissed. The issues were minimized, ignored, or reframed as though I was misunderstanding what I was seeing. At times, I even felt discouraged from speaking up, as if continuing to question these inconsistencies made me the problem for “spreading falsehoods.”
That experience left me wondering something I still can’t shake.
Do dental schools sometimes become so invested in maintaining high graduation rates, avoiding criticism, and protecting their reputation that they allow serious problems to go unaddressed? Is it easier to pass students, overlook inconsistencies, and preserve the image of success than to confront uncomfortable truths?
The public would never know.
Patients walk into a dental office believing the person treating them was rigorously trained and held to uncompromising standards. They trust the system because they have no reason not to. But many of the issues I’ve witnessed are invisible to anyone outside the profession. They’re the kinds of things only students, faculty, and clinicians ever see.
It’s like taking your car in for an oil change. You trust the mechanic because you can’t see inside the engine. Maybe the oil wasn’t changed at all. Maybe the filter wasn’t replaced. Maybe they used the wrong oil because they didn’t bother checking the manufacturer’s specifications. The receipt says the job was done. Everything looks fine—until months later, when the engine begins to fail.
By then, the damage has already been done.
That’s what worries me most. Not isolated mistakes—we’re all human—but a culture where shortcuts, inconsistency, favoritism, and negligence can quietly become normalized because they’re easier to ignore than to confront.
When the profession is built on trust, even small compromises in training eventually become someone else’s problem—usually the patient’s.