Shaista Salam

I can break accountability into two forms- one is internal accountability and the other is external accountability. Internal accountability is the accountability you have with yourself. You set a goal, a target or a task you want to accomplish, one that no one really knows about. It’s something only you know about and can hold yourself accountable to. They say that goal setting is one of the most important forms of internal accountability so it’s important to set strategic useful goals for yourself.

How to maximize your experience in dental school during the pandemic? I empathize with the situation dental students are in right now because of all the restrictions placed due to COVID. They’ve been out of clinics and unable to get the hands-on experience they would have gotten during regular dental school to build basic foundational skills required for their clinical career. For the dental students listening in from Australia, Canada or the US, the main thing to do is to look after yourself at this point. It’s quite stressful.

In this episode I want to tackle a quote by Bill Gates that’s made a big impact on how I look at different things in life. The quote goes something like this – “People overestimate what can be done in one year and underestimate what can be done in a decade.” To me this means that a lot of us are impatient, myself included. We are very impatient with our goals and with what we want to achieve. We’re always hungry to get things done quickly. Unfortunately, this can lead to burnout, dissatisfaction and loss of motivation.

I’ve had a long history with social media over the years. It’s done a lot for me in terms of growing my podcast and growing an audience that values my content. I first started using Instagram to post dental content when I was in my final year of dental school. At the time, it was a small community and it was fairly easy to know and follow most of the bigger dental accounts.

Today I want to talk about CPD (CE) and how you should plan your continuing dental education after dental school.

As we finish dental school and enter the workforce, for the first time we encounter the absence of a structured curriculum-based-learning that we got used to throughout our schooling and higher education. We begin to see lots of short courses and dental programs being advertised everywhere, each claiming to be the best. Some of our friends join new courses with up and coming clinicians while others join traditionally popular ones.