Odontología infantil, todo un reto para mi | Pediatric dentistry, a challenge for me

Hi Hivers! I'm back here and I want to do a special post about one of the biggest challenges for me professionally. When I decided to study dentistry I never thought how difficult it would be to care for pediatric patients, so in this post I will tell you why and my personal experience.

In the second year of my career I started to study a subject called pediatric dentistry, and I really liked it very much. In my third year I started to see a comprehensive clinic for children, and there I had to see real patients. That's when the challenge began. Getting children patients was the hardest part, I lost a lot of time and money. I would get patients and after a few days they would leave me. Thank God I met a very special person who helped me, got me patients and I was able to finish my career. In spite of the difficulty of getting patients, the challenge did not end there; attending those children in the university clinic was the really difficult part. The university put many obstacles in your way, sometimes the patients did not allow themselves to be treated, they were afraid and cried (logical, they were children) but the doctors hardly helped you. Only very few professors were good and supportive. So it was very difficult, but it was a goal that I managed to achieve and to this day I feel a lot of satisfaction for that.

After overcoming that stage and now as a qualified dentist, things have changed, however the bad memories of the past sometimes appear. Today I work in a public and private practice. So taking care of children is my day to day life. In college I joked that I didn't want to see children anymore 😂 but the truth is I have started to appreciate my pediatric patients.

The most difficult thing is to adapt the child to the consultation. Children are predisposed to feel pain and that is why they do not want to be seen. This is also the responsibility of the parents who, instead of talking to their children, threaten them by telling them "the doctor is going to inject you if you don't stay calm". I first talk to the patient, show him the mirror and every part of the office so that he feels safe and familiar. When I have his confidence, I turn on the lamp and examine his teeth. Everything will depend on the child's behavior. There are some children who do not even allow themselves to be attended, on the contrary, they only cry and scream. That is why we have to use adaptation techniques such as "tell, show and do" but even this can take several appointments.

In the public dental office where I work, many children arrive, and sometimes it gives me great sadness and impotence to see how children of 4, 5 and 6 years old have all their teeth decayed and broken. It is something that bothers me a lot, because that is absolutely the responsibility of the parents, because a child of that age does not have the capacity to brush himself. Besides, they only take the child to the office when he/she is in a lot of pain and it is too late. But despite the discomfort, I have to be patient and take care of these children who need it so much. Although the parents get a good scolding from me 😁.

Most of the children who come to the dentist's office have never been to the dentist before, that is why we have to be very careful, since we never know if the patient is allergic to the anesthesia or any product he/she is using at that moment. That is why sometimes we get nervous and we are always monitoring the patient to see if he/she feels anything strange or if everything is going well. All this must be accompanied by a good medical history and parental questioning.

The most beautiful thing is to do the extraction of baby teeth and see the excitement of the patients waiting for the tooth fairy, those smiles and that illusion are worth the whole process. Over time and as I gain more experience it has become much easier to attend pediatric patients, there will always be difficulties but the important thing is to know how to handle the situation and not to generate trauma in children. Dentistry does not have to be painful nor should it cause fear in patients. So from my practice I am doing my bit so that tomorrow patients will not feel those fears.

In conclusion I can say that it has been very difficult but at the same time an incredible experience. I hope God allows me to continue helping many more children and be a better and better dentist. Who knows, maybe in the future I will do a postgraduate degree in pediatric dentistry 😂 we will see.