Dentistry

A typical week in Year 2 of Dentistry starts to feel genuinely clinical. Monday morning is a two-hour Oral Pathology lecture covering mucosal diseases—you’re learning to differentiate between oral lichen planus, leukoplakia, and candidiasis based on clinical appearance, biopsy findings, and patient history. After lunch comes the highlight of the week: a three-hour Phantom Head session in the simulation lab. You’re seated at a dental unit working on a typodont (a realistic jaw model with replaceable teeth), preparing a Class II cavity for an amalgam restoration. The precision required is remarkable—you’re drilling within millimetres of the simulated pulp, and the demonstrator checks your cavity walls with a probe before you’re allowed to place the filling. Two hours in, your back aches and your fingers are cramped, but the finished restoration looks clean.

Tuesday brings Human Disease, a module shared with medical students covering systemic conditions that affect dental treatment—diabetes, bleeding disorders, cardiovascular disease, and their implications for anaesthesia and wound healing. The afternoon is a Dental Materials science practical where you test the compressive strength of different restorative materials and learn why composite resin behaves differently from glass ionomer cement. Wednesday is a mix: a Periodontology lecture on the classification of gum disease (you need to memorise the 2017 staging and grading system), followed by a Radiography session where you learn to take and interpret periapical and bitewing X-rays on manikins. Getting the correct angulation and exposure takes practice—your first attempts show either overlapping teeth or elongated roots.

Thursday is a full day at the teaching hospital. In Year 2, you’re mostly observing senior students and clinicians treat real patients—simple extractions, scale and polish, denture impressions. You assist by passing instruments, managing suction, and taking notes. It’s your first real exposure to the clinical environment: the smell of eugenol, the sound of the ultrasonic scaler, a nervous patient who needs reassurance before a local anaesthetic injection. Friday is reserved for a Professionalism and Ethics seminar (this week: informed consent and managing patient expectations) and self-study. Weekends involve practising wax carving for dental morphology and reviewing anatomy of the trigeminal nerve—the exam that terrifies every dental student.