It gives me great pleasure to be invited to write this piece for ARD, and I hope that it is the first of many. I qualified to practice dentistry here in the UK in 1973 and spent 35 years in general dentistry, before retiring in 2008. In conversation with Dr. Neil Hiltunen, I feel like minded in supporting the fact that thinking about retirement should be gradual, and planning for the event is crucial and should also be enjoyable.
Here in the UK, many dentists stop work. Period. Many do not have other interests and some others, apart from playing golf, seem to lack enthusiasm in retirement.
I feel it important to keep active physically and more importantly, mentally. Dentistry is a very demanding profession, these days more so from the financial aspect as well as the clinical. Since my own retirement I have been writing a bimonthly column in the most widely read national dental magazine, which has over 23,000 readers monthly.
The column is a comical slant on my years in practice, with humorous anecdotes. I found over the years that most dentists who I knew, did not seem to have a sense of humour, so, if I can recount my experiences, it may let them break into a smile! Just recently, I have been involved with a new project, Dentistry TV. This appears in the online version of the dental magazine. I interviewed 8 dentists, asking about their lives, their practices and any funny anecdotes from their practice lives.
In conjunction with your Association I hope that we can get a similar venture going over here in the UK. Hopefully, dentists will give us feedback as to how they would see their retirement panning out and maybe give us an insight to their ideas regarding hobbies, travel and any other experiences they would like to get involved with.
For a content retirement, one needs to be proactive. Through your Association, I really hope that we can encourage others not only in the USA and the UK, but long term it would be great to see ARD expanding world wide.