When you’re interested in becoming a dentist in the Netherlands, you’re probably wondering what an average work day will look like.
The clinics are well organized since they deal with many patients in one day. The average work day lasts for 8 hours and during that time you should be prepared to treat between 15-20 patients on average. The clinics are open from Monday to Friday, so you are free during the weekends. Your agenda is planned; sometimes you are even booked months ahead. Therefore you go to work knowing what’s on the schedule and unexpected emergencies are planned in the time frame of the day that’s open only for emergency patients.
You are not working alone, because you have your chair assistant, who helps you to go through your day smoothly. You sometimes have a prevention assistant present who does cleaning and pre-checks the patient for you. This way, the flow at the clinic is more efficient and you are able to treat 15-20 patients a day on average.
During and right after the treatment, you and/or your assistant will update the patient’s file in the system. When this is done, you are ready for the next patient.
Besides you, the chair assistants, and prevention assistants, there is also a receptionist and someone from the management at the clinic. They support you in making the appointments with patients, answering phones and dealing with e-mails.
As a standard, all of the clinics are working together with some dental technicians / laboratories and of course dental hygienists. Dental technicians are present some days at the clinics. Dental hygienists can work either independently or within a dental clinic and they have their own agenda.
The working hours differ depending on whether you work a morning shift (most common) or an afternoon shift. However, a work day is always 8 hours.
If you start in the morning, you have a regular lunch break around noon and you return to your patients afterwards. If you start your shift in the afternoon, then you’ll arrive after lunch at around 13:00 /13:30 and work until the evening with some coffee breaks.
In general, most dentists start working 5 days a week from Monday until Friday. After some time, it’s common to work part-time (3-4 days a week), depending on your progress and personal situation.
After a day filled with 20 patients, a nice chat with your colleagues during the lunch, a couple of runs between the dental chairs and short afternoon coffee while finishing your administration, you leave home with a good feeling of a great productive day!
