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Do as I say, not as I do: Should dental students follow their own advice?

BDJ Student volume 27, pages 14–16 (2020)Cite this article

By Ji-Yun Stephanie Yeung

On graduation, dental students pledge the oath of Hippocrates, not hypocrisy. Granted, nowhere in that medical text does it explicitly read 'practice what you preach', but it's not unreasonable to expect students to follow the oral hygiene instructions they routinely prescribe. No matter how diligently an oscillating electric toothbrush is moved around the mouth (timed precisely to two minutes of course), does cleaning remain incomplete if the floss is skipped? An untouched interdental cleaning aid may seem benign. But it's a different story for a dental student who has spent most of the day passionately advocating the importance of daily interdental cleaning to their patients. It's time to wake up and smell the double standards, with prior warning that it's not quite minty fresh.

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  1. School of Medicine and Dentistry, Barts and The London, Turner Street, E1 0BF, London, UK

    Ji-Yun Stephanie Yeung

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Correspondence to Ji-Yun Stephanie Yeung.

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Yeung, JY. Do as I say, not as I do: Should dental students follow their own advice?. BDJ Student 27, 14–16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41406-020-0124-z

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