Guest Post: Dental School in Turkey

This feature article is linked with to another recently published post on http://www.dorkydentalstudent.com written by my first guest writer: Gaye Ustuner – a third year dental student training at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey.

 

In the first post, Gaye wrote about the application process for dental schools in Turkey and here we will get a chance to find out a bit more about the dental school structure in Turkey but also to get to know Gaye.

Gaye also interviewed Dr Bora Korkut, an amazing aesthetic/restorative dentist who is part of the dental school faculty at Marmara University where she trains and you can read that here. 

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What is it like to study dentistry in Turkey?

The dentistry programme in Turkey is 5 years in duration just like many other countries.

In the first year we only take theorical courses and practice in the pre-clinical labs. The first year pre-clinic mainly aims to improve the students’ hand manipulation skills and teaching morphology of tooth. In the second semester of the first year, we practice preparations of plastic teeth in the phantom heads.

In second year we come across with lots of theoretical medical courses like psychology, histology, anatomy alongside the dental modules like prosthodontics, endodontics. And continuing from the first year, we spend a lot of time in the pre-clinical skills labs working on the phantom heads.

Third year is the year when we start seeing patients. When a patient comes to our hospital and diagnosed by doctors he/she is classified as available for 3rd, 4th or 5th year students. So we take a patient list for 3rd year student and start to our clinic practice. Also we take dental medicine lessons like oral and maxillofacial surgery, dental anaesthesia, periodontology, dental materials etc. At our clinic we have a working system called “entegre” system.

The entegre system basically means that everyday of the week, we have a ‘internship’ at another dental specialty. For example, on Monday I have an endodontics internship, on Tuesday I have a periodontology internship and so on…

And the great thing about this entegre system is that it means we can finish all kind of treatments of a patient needs. It is just like how a dentist would work at her/his own clinic.

Fourth and fifth years are mainly goes at clinic and with patients. And after five years… FREEDOM!

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When I graduate as a dentist from Marmara University, Istanbul – I can work as a dentist in lot of countries such as Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria etc, but besides these countries it is still possible to work in other countries by simply doing the dental recognition exams.

You can check this site if you have more questions about recognition:

http://www.enic-naric.net/turkey.aspx

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Is the dental school part of a larger university or is it specifically a dental school?

First, our school started its journey as Istanbul Private Dentistry School at 1962, and then became a part of Marmara University at 1982.

Marmara University, Dentistry Faculty has two departments:

1. Dental Clinic Sciences
2. Basic Dental Health Sciences

 

 

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GETTING TO KNOW THE WRITER – GAYE USTUNER

 I’m I. Gaye Ustuner, I’m third year dental student and I’m 21 years old.

Besides dentistry, in my daily life I do sports and exercises and I really like ice skating. I’m also really into tennis. And I absolutely love music – it has a very important role in my life; I have tried playing guitar and violin for some years.

Also you can take a look at my Spotify profile to check out my taste of music: https://open.spotify.com/user/gayeustuner

What are my future plans?

First of all, my first future plan is to graduate from dental school and after that I want to continue with a masters programme. I would hopefully like to go on and do my masters (Msc) is Europe, in particular I want to do it in Spain. For this reason I’m currently learning Spanish and have been for a while now: I’m at B1 level and continuing to improve my Spanish.

I really want to get my recognition after graduation which would allow me to go and work as a dentist in Spain. Beyond these plans, it I haven’t got any concrete plans, but it would be goof to go on and gain a PhD. So for now I hope those plans will come true and I will continue to work towards making them a reality!

I haven’t yet thought much about which dental speciality I’d like to go on and focus my career in, but I’m sure I will decide on a speciality in the near future before deciding which specific masters programmes and PhD focus to apply for.

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If you are interested in applying for dental school in Turkey and want to know anymore specific information, then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

My email address is: gayeustuner@gmail.com 

And here is my personal Instagram page if you want to follow me 🙂

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Thanks for reading – I hope you found this post interesting

If you’d like to collaborate and write similar articles to share your own dental journey and write about what it’s like to be at dental school in your own country then please get in touch!