Seeking advice about a Career in Dentistry?!

Seeking advice about a Career in Dentistry?

I am a recent college graduate now working in the medical research field, and am interested in pursuing a career in dentistry. My main reasons for wanting to become a dentists are because I enjoy working in the healthcare field, especially the clinical setting, love the idea of making pretty smiles and want to be able to open up my own practice someday thus being my own boss. The hours, lifestyle, and salary of a dentists are very attractive as well, but i have heard very different answers to such. So my question is, how difficult is it to succeed in dentistry? I did some calculating, and the cost of dental school for me would be around 250,000..plus interest! I fear that with that much debt, I will be in debt for a very long time and struggling to pay the bills til i'm old. I enjoy the dental field, but if my hard work and long training only leaves me in a worse situation financially, then perhaps it would not be worth going back to school.

Aside from doing the actual dental work and making the world a better place one smile at a time, you have to get a paycheck. One of the hardest things to do is set fees and stick with that. One of the last people to get paid on the list of bills people pay are doctors and dentist and dentists fall below doctors. We are pretty equivalent to veterinarians as far as viewed by the public. My husband and I do what we do because we love what we do. We give price breaks to A LOT of people and some times people take advantage of that generosity. My husband was never taught the basics of running a dental office when he first opened a private practice and got stung many,many times. There are so many non-dentistry things you have to think about. Staff, do you hire young inexperienced staff until you get a footing? How do you handle staff disputes? Most offices have women staff members and women can be quite tough to work with. Do you join a thriving group practice, if so what percentage will you bring home? When you do cases requiring a lab fee how is that taken out of your pay?
Disputes with patients, if a patient won't pay do you send them to Collection, do you service charge them? Will you bill insurance, will you work with public assistance? Public assistance programs can be a ton of work and very little reward. There are a multitude of questions and don't forget the overhead with all the insurances you need to have in place are very costly?
Talk with, work with a dental office staff that you trust that will be honest with you BEFORE you make a decision on getting into the dental field.