Dental/dental hygiene trainees discuss dental training/education and race. (2023)
When you see patients, a lot of your interpersonal skills come from what you’ve seen in life, what you’ve experienced, and your development. So when that problem [. . .] The shift in dentistry needs to take place from a deeper. . .More people need to be involved. The barrier to enter this profession is really high, financially, just all of it is really a lot. That needs to be changed, it needs to be easier to be this person so that there can be more dentists in areas instead of [. . .] Because incentivizing people is hard, I think one of the biggest things is to start conversations that highlight commonalities rather than, “Yes, it’s important to celebrate diversity, but in order to do that everybody needs to feel safe.” And I think I would probably get canceled for saying it, but a lot of times when somebody… I understand when people come, the majority white perspective, when they’re trying to ask and learn, and they just get canceled immediately. Well, then why are they going to ask and learn anymore? It’s hard to have that energy to have these conversations, but I think that needs to happen. Recruitment from earlier needs to happen, there’s a lot of things that need to change.