Streetlife

Good a levels required, 5 years university , couple of years training after that and keeping upto date, also cost of providing premises equipment, staff to pay, all wether anyone to see or not, 5 minutes for you but...........

It depends what he did of course, what materials etc etc, but apart from that it doesn't really sound too bad. It's easy to equate £17.50 for five minutes to the equivalent of £225 per hour. Even that wouldn't be outrageously expensive when compared with other professionals in Suffolk. But when you consider that it's very unlikely he would be able to see 12 patients in an hour, and it would be more like 5 or 6 at an absolute maximum, then the numbers look quite reasonable.

Say he sees six patients an hour at £17.50 a pop ( he needs time to write up notes, clear up, prepare for next patient etc), and then manages to do that for a full 7 hours a day (which is doubtful), then he would earn £735 a day. Let's say he works 5 days a week and takes 4 weeks holiday plus bank holidays. I reckon that means he would earn about £164,000 per year. Out of that, he has to pay for his premises, equipment , staff and ongoing training. Suddenly it looks like your dentist would be a reasonably well paid professional. When you then consider the initial training he will have completed and the fact that in reality he can't actually work flat out 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, it looks even more modest.

I'm not a dentist by the way! But for the work and good that dentists do, I'm more than happy to pay at that sort of level.

This £17.50 is presumably under the NHS (not private). In that case what SuffolkBoy did not take into account in his business calculations is that the dentist also receives a subsidy from the NHS.

Luckily for us the £17.50 fee is fixed by the NHS for patients but the dentist actually gets an additional revenue from the NHS for his consultation. Have you checked out how much you would have paid for similar private treatment? According to this site http://www.dentalcentres.co.uk/dentist-fees-nhs.php you would likely pay anything from £ 26.25 to £47.25 

So dentistry is a pretty lucrative profession but I'm not sure it would be for me looking into peoples mouths every hour of every day.

Well spotted, Big Spot. Shows how much I know!

This 5 minutes was for my 82 year old dad! Pretty much looked in his mouth and sent him on his way!

My dentist has a chat about any problems that have cropped up, spends time having a good look around, talks to me about any treatment, including diagrams/printouts if needed and I also get a clean and polish. If it takes a decade to gain these qualifications and skills they ought to use them.

Sally  m says five years University !!! Its almost impossible to believe that someone specialising in a one area of the human body needs that much training when a GP does about the same time at Uni. albeit they have ongoing training throughout their career, No way is dentistry a worthwhile career. You would be 60 years old before you paid off your student debts !!

Hi actually I was wrong it's ONLY 4 years, and dentists have ongoing training well I believe.

Yes training paid for by the tax payer I believe!

Paid for out of dentist income, so comes out of the fee, as do all the running costs of the practice, and the fee the dentist gets from NHS (tax payer) rather than patient is only about 10% so an extra 1.70.

Well even 10% of the yearly income that SuffolkBoy calculated above (£164.000 PA) means the government pay an additional £16,400 PA which is a years salary on it's own for lots of us. There's no doubting dentistry is lucrative but I suspect not much fun.

You were lucky I am 80 now my last dentist seam to think that at 75 you do not care for you teeth. But then you are over the three score so went private and it cost me. £ 1200 ahhhhhhhh

I usually go to the dentist when on holiday - always cheaper than England for a scale and polish ;-)

Well that depends on where you go on holiday !