An NUS student who used to study Dentistry recently stated on how NUS Dentistry is an incredibly oppressive place to be in. It was even stated that there was a blatant abuse of power that is happening and also how the school refuses to take any feedback.
Here is the full story.
Why I Disliked Being in NUS Dentistry (Advice for Future Applicants)
Firstly, it might sound incredulous to many of you, but the NUS Dentistry is an incredibly oppressive place to be in. Students are expected to fall in line. Those who attract attention get themselves in trouble. I’ve often heard from my friends in medicine about how they are able to feedback to the school about the problems they face. I find it incredibly hard to see the day where the Faculty of Dentistry entertains student feedback. Every year, the school asks its students for feedback, and almost every year, student feedback participation is incredibly low. The school blames the students for being lazy and unresponsive, but has the school ever asked itself why this is so? Perhaps it is because students have realised that their feedback doesn’t even matter. Why would we feedback, when none of it is taken into consideration? Why should we respond to a survey that is dismissed by lecturers and supervisors who repeat the same cycle of top-down instruction every year?
Secondly, students and even junior staff are often called upon to respect the hierarchy. Even if you’re right, you’re wrong as long as your opinion clashes with someone who is more senior than you. I was taught to keep my head down in school, and so I did. Every time I was shouted at, scolded, spoken to like I’m a worthless bottom-feeder, I took the beating and laid low. To be fair, that kept me out of the radar just enough for me to slip out under. Afterall, none of us escape this place without getting scuffed up a little. It was a small price to pay to get out. I never really got the brunt of the beating, but some of my classmates were less fortunate. Those who challenged those in charge were punished, and they had their lives made difficult and some were retained as a result.
Thirdly, the school is a political minefield. Tensions exist within the staff, within the students, and between students and staff. Staff members who dislike each other often contradict one another either openly or subtly, and students get caught in the crossfire. This idea of a supervisor calling another supervisor’s plan stupid isn’t something that’s uncommon, although I think splurting out expletives isn’t a common sight these days. The patient might have caught a supervisor on a bad day. Most staff tend not to splurt expletives in front of patients, but they might not be so kind to students or even their junior staff in private. Even students sometime compete against one another in an ugly fight. Students are given very little resources to work with, thrown into seemingly impossible situations, and sometimes it turns into a dog eat dog world, where the fittest or most vicious survives.
Fourthly, the system of power and abuse is not only reflected in the way the faculty treats it students, but also its less “important” staff (which we completely disagree with – all members of the healthcare system must be treated equally). Janitors are ill-treated by the dental nurses – dental nurses have even chased janitors out of the pantry and banned them from using the fridge once. Recently, lab technicians have almost all quit the faculty due to how the management has abused them. As a result, students have lost the technician support they need to complete their denture and crown cases. I feel sorry for the students out there who are still studying, it was hard in our time, but it seems impossible in theirs right now. I hope the school manages to hire more labtechs to help all of these struggling kids.
Fifthly, students are placed under incredible stressful forces that no other dental school exerts. Did you know that Singaporean dental students are expected to source for their own patients they need to graduate? The school does send some our way, but the bulk of our patients have to be found ourselves. These include fillings, root canal therapy, gum disease, dentures, crowns and even surgical extractions. Have you ever tried looking for 3 patients who have completely no teeth amongst your friends and family? Zero teeth at all, it’s like trying to strike gold in a mud river. Students overseas do not have such pressure placed on them. They are given patients by the school, which deems it part of their job to supply students with the necessary patients to help them get sufficient training. This is not the case in Singapore. In Singapore, if you have no patients, you simply get retained, each year of unsubsidised school fee is about 100,000 SGD (29,000 subsidised), and each year of lost opportunity cost in terms of starting income comes up to about 60,000 SGD. Just imagine losing 90,000 SGD simply because you couldn’t find enough patients to work on. In the UK and Australia, students never worry about such things, simply because the school believes that it is its job to provide students with the resources they need to bolster their training. Yet, our elite world class institution fails to do so.
Sixthly, the insults and poor student treatment. Overseas, and even in local medical schools, teachers maintain a certain degree of respect for students. They are encouraged to ask, to learn, to enjoy their course of study. In NUS Dentistry, this does not seem to be the case. Here, there are stupid questions, there are stupid students, and there are also stupid students who ask too many stupid questions. Not all teachers are so mean, but a number of them are. They have given dental students nightmares for decades. Even dentists in their later years remember the days of being tortured in school by nasty individuals. If students are constantly afraid of being wrong, punished, marked through negative marking and kicked out of the clinic (when the patients are still on the dental chair), shouted at, reprimanded, called names, and stared at as if they were worthless, no authentic learning can possibly be achieved. Furthermore, members of the staff are known to constantly imply to students that those who step out of line will be punished, the worst threat being retention, since much of dentistry work is subjective.
Think of it this way, if you submit a work of art, some may think it’s great, and some may think it’s ugly, so the assessor has full autonomy to decide if you pass or fail. If you build a denture or a crown that is in accordance to the design that the assessor likes, you get a pass, but if the assessor does not like it, you fail. Inter-assessor difference depends on the varying school of thoughts. This is accepted in the faculty. However, this also gives supervisors and staff the autonomy to fail students based on subjective ideas and feelings. This means that the supervisor rarely needs to justify why the student has failed since much of it is subjective. (Also, students always walk into the final professional BDS exams, not knowing their CA marks, so nobody actually knows how much marks you need to score in your final exams to graduate. How you’re assessed is a complete mystery – with the exception of the ever-so-kind pedodontics and periodontic departments who always have their student’s interests in mind)
Because of all this, it is dangerous to speak out. I know batchmates who have been disliked for whatever reason, be it speaking out, or doing things that displeases certain members of the staff and have been directly or indirectly retained for it. It’s an open secret that the faculty will punish whoever dares to challenge their authority. I thought I was lucky to be admitted to the school of dentistry until I saw the blatant abuses of power of those who have accumulated power for themselves over many years – something I never expected to see in Singapore.
Most students will be too afraid to speak up even if the media does approach them, and the school warns students against talking to the media. I hope that this letter from a senior and graduate will let all the struggling students out there know that they are not alone, to work hard, to strive on, and become the healthcare workers Singapore deserve.