Mental Wellbeing Focus #4 – Identity & Self Worth in Dentistry with Dr Viet Le and Dr Chiraag Devani

Welcome to the Mental Wellbeing Series by Dental Head Start. Join us across a limited series of episodes as we delve into the world of mental health and explore strategies and tips to improve our overall well-being.  Hosted by Dr Kaejenn Tchia In today’s episode I chat with Dr Viet Le and Dr Chiraag Devani on an important mental health topic of Identity and Self Worth in Dentistry. Learn the importance of how your self worth correlates to your clinical confidence in your dental career and the MASK framework can help you better show up more authentically as a dentist you truly wish to be. We also vulnerably share some of our own challenges in our careers thus far to help normalise the struggles you may encounter in your career and how to navigate them. Dr Viet Le and Dr Chiraag Devani Both Viet and Chiraag graduated together from UQ in 2005 and between them have worked at practices on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast and everything in between, with Chiraag also spending time in Melbourne.  While they have spent many years together, even working at the same practice for the past 11 years, they have taken different paths in their careers.  Viet has been working continuously since graduation and ended up being partner at their current practice, The Dental Project, while Chiraag has taken many extended breaks between jobs to travel and explore the world and enjoys the freedom of being an associate. With regards to their mental health journey, they started in similar circumstances but took different approaches to finding the answers to their struggles.  It lead them apart, with Chiraag taking an 18mth break to travel and Viet working on himself and his practice, but upon coming together they found commonality.  And with seeing a growing trend of struggle amongst clinicians like themselves, they created Being Together in order to share what they have learnt in order to help individuals deal with the stress in dentistry, while also creating psychologically safer dental practices and teams. http://www.being2gether.com.au/ Instagram: @beingtogether_