Dr. Edward Thibodeau and Ms. Lauren Mentasti have made some excellent observations in their May JADA article, "Who Stole Nemo?" (JADA 2007; 138[5]:656–60).
I think that every practicing dentist has experienced the "cringe factor" while watching a motion picture that happens to depict dentists. Personally, I try to avoid dentist movies, and I’m sure that many of our colleagues do as well.
I would like to add one point to the many good ones in the article: namely, the "rich dentist" stereotype, which never fails to appear in a dentist movie. In movies, all dentists enjoy incredibly wealthy lifestyles without really doing that much actual physical work! The dentists always live in mansions, always wear $3,000 suits and always drive $100,000 cars. However, these dentists don’t really seem to do all that much actual dentistry; at most about 15 minutes of it a day, when they don’t happen to be on the golf course or at the yacht club.
The fee-paying public comes away with the idea that "all dentists are rich." They also get the idea that we dentists don’t need to work very hard to finance our opulent lifestyles, as if monetary wealth was somehow automatically conferred upon us along with our diplomas.
This is surely one of the most annoying and discouraging movie-dentist stereotypes that many of us (and our spouses and families) deal with all the time.
Many thanks to Dr. Thibodeau and Ms. Mentasti for their fine article.
