WHY DO DENTAL PROFESSIONALS OVERTHINK EVERYTHING?

So someone's put, I feel really incompetent now that I've started working so they must be newly qualified.

Is it normal to feel incompetent? I feel like all I do is think about what I've done in my appointments and what I could have done better.

I feel like I cannot switch my brain off.

Yeah.

Do you still feel like that now after like so many years? Do you? Yeah.

I don't feel like it as much as I have done in the past.

I do resonate with that.

I have definitely been there.

I think it's quite normal.

It's kind of like self-reflection when you first qualify.

Not just being reflective.

I don't do it to the sense of I feel like I've done stuff wrong, but I do look back and not even kind of recent.

It could be like, I don't know, two years ago and be like, had I done this different, would I have got a different result?

Yeah, or if I knew then what I know now, but isn't that the whole point of CPD? It's growth, yeah.

The whole point of CPD is to keep learning.

We're in a profession where it is lifelong learning.

So we are meant to be, we aren't meant to know everything on day one because things change as well.

So it's about lifelong learning and keeping up with CPD.

And yeah, there are going to be times that you're going to go, oh, I didn't do it that way back then, but I do do it that way now.

And I think self-reflection is a really, really good thing because how do you improve if you're not looking at what you're doing and adjusting and changing and learning from your mistakes?

Exactly.

That's just human nature.

That's how you learn.

I think the problem comes when you are over-critical.

Yes.