Medicine vs. Dentistry: Which path is better?

I’ve been scrolling through some of the older threads here and noticed there’s a ton of friction between MDs and dentists, which honestly just baffles me. I actually pulled my medical degree in Cleveland first, but then—mostly because I was totally smitten by this gorgeous colleague who ended up becoming my wife😍—I went ahead and knocked out dental school too, so officially, yeah, I’m a "dentist."😬
I only had to take the Hippocratic Oath once, since the wording is identical whether you're an MD or a dentist. And look, I won't bore you with the details, but I remember seeing this quote from the New England Journal of Medicine back on September 10, 1994; vol. 309, from the
editor in chief
: "Why should there even be a separate profession dedicated solely to treating the oral cavity? 😁If we started assigning specific professions to every single body part, we might as well have a specialized career just for the brain (the seat of reason). There is undeniably more in common between the mouth and the rest of the digestive tract than there is between the end of the digestive tract and the brain. Any argument for the oral cavity being its own distinct field is more historical than logical" (end of quote)👍
So, to all my younger colleagues out there, the veterans, and those of you still grinding through med school: the mission for both groups is to treat the whole human being. It doesn't matter if the patient is hurting because of a tooth or a finger. Healing is healing, and at the end of the day, the one doing the healing is a doctor.👍

Hey, please tell me—how much more schooling did you have to grind through after finishing med school?

I’m gonna be keeping a close eye on this thread—watching everything unfold with both eyes wide open... just so you guys know I'll be jumping in if things start turning into a total shouting match.

I asked this guy a totally normal question. Why on earth would he take offense?

Look, Lawrence Wells, I’ll give you the answer.
If you're switching from medicine to dentistry, you'd be entering as a second-year student. It all depends on which dental courses the university requires you to retake based on their specific curriculum and schedule, plus whatever medical credits they actually agree to transfer—which really depends on when you make the jump. Either way, you're looking at at least four more years of school, or five under the current system.

I forgot to mention—you can't just fast-track through dentistry in a year or two. You have to grind through it like everyone else: preclinical work and theory first, then clinical rotations.

I agree with my colleague. A doctor is a doctor. We should all stick to our respective specialties, whether it’s teeth, GI, or anything else. Unfortunately, based on what I've seen, plenty of medical professionals look down on our field and underestimate our expertise. (And if you actually want to be good at your job, you need that deep knowledge—the fact that there are seven different dental specialties shows just how massive this field really is.) It's sad, but true: they only acknowledge us as doctors when they're in pain or when their kids are hurting. That's when they finally show up at our clinics, because they don't have the training or the equipment to handle it themselves.
That's all I've got on dentistry vs. medicine!

Honestly, it doesn't even phase me anymore. I get the feeling most of the frustration from the medicine crowd starts back during their freshman year. (Since I did my dentistry training in Cleveland, I ended up sharing a few classes with the med students.) It mostly seems to come from people who actually wanted to go into medicine but couldn't make the cut for it. Back then, they’d constantly look down on us, acting like we were just taking some "shortened" version of their degree... It’s laughable, really. No matter how hard they try to belittle dentistry, they're really just projecting their own failures onto anyone else under the same general umbrella. It used to get under my skin, but not anymore. These days, I just try to give the medical types a wide berth...☕

Hey Lawrence Wells, just wanted to drop this here: I've been grinding in medicine & dentistry for about seven years now, with five of those specifically focused on the dental side of things.😠

o, looks like you really did your homework 😁

Honestly, trying to split medicine & dentistry into two different worlds just doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than a second. I mean, how are you even supposed to function as a dentist if you don't have a solid grasp on general medicine? It's all connected, you know?

I was originally thinking about going down the medicine & dentistry route, but honestly, things worked out pretty well this way too. To be totally real with you guys, I spent most of my college years just messing around and taking it easy, then I basically skipped the mid-life crisis part, got married right away, and jumped straight into the workforce. Though, now that I actually sit back and think about what my retirement is going to look like... 😬

Matthew Nguyen12 said:Separating dentistry from medicine is just plain stupid. You can't even function as a dentist if you don't understand medicine.

Facts. But let's be real—even you know that compared to something like neurosurgery or internal med, the medical side of dentistry is way more "surface level"—it doesn't dive nearly as deep.
then again—isn't it a bit much hearing certain dentists act all high and mighty like they're the "real" doctors because, you know, they supposedly "know everything"?😉

wearywalker21 said:I forgot to mention—you can't just skip straight to the dental clinicals. You can't just fast-track through it in a year or two; you have to grind through the theory and pre-clinicals just like every other student before you ever touch a patient.

I’m with him on this one—a doctor is a doctor. We should all be sticking to our own lanes, whether we're dealing with teeth, digestive issues, or anything else. But honestly? In my experience, way too many medical professionals look down on our field and underestimate what we actually know. And if you want to actually be good at what you do, you need that deep knowledge—the fact that there are seven different dental specialties should be enough proof of how massive this field really is. It's sad, but it's true—they only start treating us like real doctors when they're in pain or when their kids are hurting, because then they realize they don't have the training or the equipment to handle it themselves.
That's my two cents on dentistry vs. general medicine!

Thanks!🙂 Maybe one of these sunny days I'll finally sign up for dental school—you never know!

Zachary Thompson9, nobody knows everything, right?😕 That’s kind of the whole point. But honestly, I don't really buy into that whole "deeper" versus "lighter" argument. From what I understand, a dentist doesn't deal with orthopedics, sure, but they definitely handle oral surgery—something a general practitioner just isn't trained for. If you ask me, it’s more like general medicine covers a massive, wide-ranging territory, while dentistry acts more like a specialized field within that ecosystem. Still, there's no denying that being a dentist requires someone to have a rock-solid foundation in medicine & dentistry first.🙏

Zachary Thompson9 said:True. But you also know that medicine & dentistry isn't quite as "intense"—it doesn't dive as deep as it does in internal medicine.
Isn't it a bit pretentious when some dentists claim they're the "real" doctors just because they think they know everything? 😉

Nobody—absolutely nobody—knows all of medicine, including dentistry. It’s impossible, and honestly, it wouldn't be good if they did. That's exactly why we have specialties and subspecialties. Whether or not dentistry is "easier" is debatable; you mostly study what's actually relevant to daily practice (even though we covered other stuff too, and I still don't get why we studied things like certain parts of gynecology 😕), and you're learning throughout your entire career. Even after graduation, you don't have total mastery; you just have a broad foundation. A dentist's medical knowledge upon graduation is similar to a general practitioner's—you know a little about everything, but nothing deeply specialized. Doctors move on to specialties, or if they stay in general practice, their scope is limited because most patients end up getting referred to specialists anyway.

Lawrence Wells—if you want my advice, don't even consider dentistry. It's a fantasy. Dentistry is 500 times easier than medicine, both in terms of schooling and finding a job.

I try to write a post, and then—boom—the Wi-Fi cuts out right as I hit send. Just lovely...
Anyway, folks, here’s my second attempt 😁 (the TL;DR version)
I kind of see where you guys are coming from, though it’s a bit of a bummer that both of you are thinking in such black-and-white terms—treating that whole "everything" concept like it’s some absolute, rigid monolith. Honestly, I was particularly impressed by how wearywalker21 phrased his post... truly profound stuff. Deep bows all around. But hey, I also gotta give a nod to the idea that it’s 500 times easier for people in medicine & dentistry to just grab a paycheck and a steady job. Well, if you say so... 😬
Look, since my neighbor is crushing it as a pre-med student—your future colleague, by the way—I've actually seen the sheer amount of material one has to grind through for an internal medicine exam (they even post a specific list of study questions on the official university sites). So, in my opinion, it would be totally absurd to claim that things "here" are taught more broadly but not more deeply... which is why Matthew Nguyen12's post left me scratching my head.
Nobody is trying to belittle anyone else's knowledge here (I mean, the degree proves you know your stuff) and we aren't exactly running a competition to see who can cram more facts into their brain. Because of that, I actually think the thread title is a bit off; instead of "vs," something else might have fit better. 😉
Regarding what wearywalker21 said about how "once you graduate, you know a little bit about everything, but nothing concretely or completely"—yeah, that's true, but that applies to pretty much any degree, not just one in biomedical sciences. Sure, there are nuances, obviously. 🙂

Cheers,

Zachary Thompson9, I can't even tell you how much of a blur today has been, but honestly, back when I was grinding through those medical exams, I ended up taking a bunch of them right alongside the dentistry students—and let me tell you, there wasn't a single shred of difference in the questions they were throwing at us. It feels like trying to make a real dent in the system is a losing battle because, no matter what you try to push through during something like an internal medicine rotation, everything just ends up being treated as equally vital anyway. I guess the real kicker is whether gynecology is even still part of the curriculum for dentists (I couldn't quite remember if that was still the case)🙂 To be fair, I don't think a general practitioner or a dentist would feel particularly "in their element" if they suddenly had to deliver a baby or something. It’s probably better to just have a specialized midwife on hand for stuff like that, right?😍

Honestly, finding a solid gig and actually making decent money is becoming such a massive uphill battle for everyone in medicine & dentistry lately. It feels like we’re all just heading toward a future where unemployment is going to be the norm for our field. It’s a real shame they aren't approving more residency programs right now, but hey, I guess it's a case of you get what you pay for, right?
It really warms my heart to see how much common ground we have here, and honestly, Zachary Thompson9 hit the nail on the head; it really should have been labeled "medicine & dentistry"

So, I was just scrolling through some stuff and figured I'd throw my two cents in about this whole mess and my experiences with our "amazing" education system here in America.

Basically, like 70% of the world doesn't even separate medicine and dentistry—it's all just one big medical specialty, which actually makes sense.
It’s honestly stupid to me, separating dentistry from medicine. I mean, the head isn't some separate body part, right? It's just part of the body, just like legs, the brain, or... you know, other organs (lol).
Take my buddy, who's a dental student. He decided he wanted to specialize in something else entirely. In most places, that's not even an issue because everything is under the medical umbrella; people change their minds and want to switch paths, and why shouldn't they be allowed to do what they love? Working a job you hate is the absolute worst. But here in the US, it's a massive headache because the medical side refuses to acknowledge almost anything from the dental side... it's even a struggle if you try to transfer to another medical school within the country. Like, moving from a school in New York to one in Chicago? Apparently, huge problems. A friend told me about it. He went for a consultation and they looked down on him like he was nothing. And the people running the show? They pass that "God complex" down to all the students.🙏 That's how he described it, anyway. Then the fighting starts because apparently his coursework was "easier"... even though they're studying basically the same books. Maybe they just have one less chapter or something. But once you pass everything and look at the reality, the practical knowledge is basically at the same general medical level; the only real difference is the specific curriculum they follow.
I guess you could have had a School of Gynecology instead of just a medical school, too.
I don't see why gynecologists need that much neurology or ophthalmology, but they still have to take those classes. It's the same for dentists, but it's easier for them since they don't actually *need*😂that much for gynecologists😁... Look, I'm not trying to diss anyone in their own field, I'm just commenting on what I see. If some specialist wants to get offended by this... sorry, but it's just how it is.
The only real solution is to just go abroad.👍............
Get this... they actually recognized his credits over there. Not for every single class, obviously, but for some. He passed the entrance exams, they sorted out the credit differences, and BOOM—he's a DDS. He managed to enroll in his third year of med school abroad in just a year. He'll finish with two degrees and two titles way faster than he ever could here. I'm not even mentioning the language barrier and stuff, but if you're truly passionate about something, those aren't really obstacles.
I'm not saying it works the same way in reverse. I think if it were the other way around, the talk about general medical subjects would be different, especially since dentists would have to retake everything from preclinical to clinical stages.

Honestly, I consider them Doctors. They help people, they treat people, and they treat a part of the body just like any other specialist would.
...........................

hmmm so I’m stuck at this crossroads between medicine or dentistry... honestly, it’s a tough call because they both sound pretty interesting to me...