This image popped up on my Google pictures app on the phone – a picture of a typical day.
A picture of a pile of notes and a list of patients representing my daily workload. I guess I got used to it over the years, and probably pretty efficient at the whole thing. Great staff and great systems. But a bucket load of stress.
It sneaks up on you, the volume of work you get through in a typical day working in NHS dentistry. You can work hard, focus for long hours – and somehow convince yourself that nothing much is changing around you.
But after 30+ years in dentistry so much had changed – it was not longer the profession I signed up for back in 1982 when I went off to the Universit of Edinburgh to be a dental student. And so 5 years ago my practice – the one I’d spent since 1990 building up – went on the market.
No more big piles of notes, no more seeing all my lovely patients. Do I miss it? – not enough that I’d ever want to go back there. I like my life now so much better!!
My 2020 Story 