Dear Friends,

Many of us have taken up academics as our profession and are keenly observing the developments in our field from close quarters over several years. Some of us are holding key administrative positions in the hierarchy of the Dental colleges while the others are involved in the departmental working and developments. Each one of us will agree that indeed the Dental profession as a whole is going through rough weathers and turbulent times in the present scenario, considering the admission status of the post graduate courses in various of the states and many institutes. The problem seems to be of offerings being plenty without appropriate opportunities and do not seem to be any speciality specific. It is almost a situation wherein the post graduate seats in each and every speciality seem to be available even at the last rounds of the counselling.

The reasons could be many, but I feel there has been an unprecedented dependence of the job opportunities available in the colleges. The scenario in colleges also has changed enormously and the unrealistic expectations amongst the job seekers have complicated the situation. Most of the institutes which relied on part time faculties have switched over to full timers owing to the availability of the staff which in a way can be considered to be good for the profession. This will full fill the needs of the regulatory bodies but at the same time there has been no control of these so called regulatory bodies on the wellbeing of the staff members and their working conditions. This has resulted in the staff members at many a place being exploited in terms of working hours, salary status and holidays or vacations not being granted even if they are permitted or are as per the norms of the prevailing governments or universities. It is high time the regulatory bodies should enforce the norms existing in this regard in the right perspective lest the profession will be ruined. Another aspect is the availability of too many seats for post graduate admissions in some of the institutes which defies logic and justification. Immediate corrective measures are required in this direction as well to rectify the situation.

The new graduates need to reduce the over dependence on the jobs and believe in their clinical skills and knowledge acquired over the years. There has been a decline in ratio of students wanting to go for post-graduation. This seemingly is because they are not in a position to visualise the benefits of higher studies or in other words, we have failed as faculty members in motivating them towards the respective specialities. We as faculty members need to impart the clinical implications of the theoretical knowledge, which if done on a regular basis will surely sow the seeds of curiosity and encourage the graduates in to exploring each of the speciality sciences through post-graduation. At the under graduate level, most of the specialities are grossly unexposed to the students in terms of clinical therapeutics, which is one of the reasons for demotivation amongst them.

We in our speciality of Periodontology are fortunate to have so many therapeutics attractions and each one of it is a potential subspecialty. There are so many sub specialities and society\'s thriving on the therapeutic components of our speciality such as Lasers, Implantology, Microsurgery and many more to name. We need to incorporate some of these at the theoretical level in the under graduate syllabus and expose these to the students at the undergraduate level. This concept of "Early exposure" has been experimented and found acceptance in quite a few other professions including Medicine and should be tried in ours too. It is really unfortunate that even though these therapeutic aspects are integral part of our speciality we have not been able to harp on the benefits of it. I believe that it is never too late to start on a new possibility, albeit with adequate preparations and discussions. Let us all initiate our thought process in this direction and put forth our suggestions and inputs in overcoming this transitional phase in our profession.

ISPecially Yours
