Can you expand on this please?
By short-term, I mean things will come up in life that you do not see coming.
My father is an OMS in Georgia. I went to dental school in Augusta. I started dental school with the plan of doing OMS training and then joining my father in practice.
My first year applying to OMS, I didn't match to a program, and I didn’t see that coming. I ended up doing a pre-residency "internship" at Emory Clinic in Atlanta. This was a last-minute arrangement, and it worked out very well. I had excellent mentors and coresidents at Emory, and I learned a lot.
The second year in applying, I matched at the Mayo Clinic for OMS. My year at Emory made me a better resident at Mayo, so it was time well spent. I do not look at it as: "Oh, it took me one more year to finish, and that will cost me $XXX,XXX.XX by the time I am 65 years old."
I feel blessed and grateful for my Mayo Clinic training and my mentors and coresidents. Mayo was (and still is) a strong program for orthognathic surgery, pathology and reconstruction, dental implants, and, of course, dentoalveolar surgery. A major part of the latter was our anesthesia training, which was second to none. We had six months full-time on the medical anesthesia service, followed by in-clinic OMS anesthesia, including 400 pediatric general anesthetics a year...and by pediatric, I mean small children using volatile agents.
Again, I had planned to return to Georgia to practice with my father (also a Mayo alumnus). However, the Mayo culture was very fulfilling to me professionally (which I didn't see coming), and I met a woman from Minnesota and got married (which I also didn't see coming).
So rather than returning to practice with my father, I stayed on the Mayo Clinic staff after the residency, with the full intent of staying for a career. But due to strategic changes in the institution, which were unrelated to me or OMS, and which I didn't see coming, I realized that I would be happier in private practice.
Wanting to stay in Minnesota, I called one of my former chiefs at Mayo and he invited me to join his large group in the Twin Cities, one of the best private practices in the Midwest. It was an honor to join that group, and again, I had the full intent of staying for a career. However, I found that many of the patient-care decisions in a big successful practice are up to a vote of the partners, and I wanted more control over what I did. I didn’t see this coming either.
Therefore, after two years, my wife and young kids and I moved to Georgia so that I could practice with my father, who allowed me to practice exactly as I wanted. This was
very fulfilling professionally. My father had developed a solo practice in which he did a lot of orthognathic surgery (approximately 90-120 jaws a year), big pathology cases and reconstructions, big implant cases, and of course, a lot of dentoalveolar surgery with office anesthesia. I took over the bulk of the hospital work, and worked with some great general dentist and specialists. I learned how to run a practice, and this took some time.
However, despite the excellent surgical environment, my wife and I mutually decided to move back to Minnesota to be closer to her family, and to raise our young family. We had both birth children and adopted children, and Minnesota had better infrastructure for adoptions at the time. I didn't know that when we moved to Georgia.
I opened my own practice back in Minnesota from scratch, and it has grown to four offices with several partners. I didn't see this coming either.
I am thus on my fourth job after my residency. I had long term goals when I was in dental school, and if you had told me then that I would end up in a different state, not practicing with my father, and spend a lot of time at youth hockey practices and games, I would not have believed you.
