Most of the time? Yes.

Severely anxious patients drain my mental energy very quickly. Crying kids. Patients that are mentally disabled to such capacity that I literally can not do anything for them. I endure a bit better with rude patients as I simply don’t deal with their shit and dump them asap.

Then you have no shows / cancellations / late appointments / double bookings – you lose money / time / energy / patients.

Every third patient will be like: “I absolutely hate going to the dentist”… And you do get tired of this.

Then you have those who with entitlement problems – no money but want treatment / want discount because they think treatment is expensive / need appointment urgently because they are a friend of a relative of a friend of a sister of a friend of the principal dentist. Nope.

Annoying stuff during treatment: ridiculously low pain thresholds despite your really gentle injections / tongue which literally goes where you go / small mouth opening / extremely lazy to keep mouth open for a min / swallows water every 2 seconds / etc.

Then you have extraction on a last patient on Friday that turns surgical / perforation during root canal /patient who still says “it hurts” despite you giving 3 cartridges of Articaine with infiltration and block and another infiltration like 30 mins ago with antibiotics given a week ago / filling which keeps failing because patient keeps eating bones / etc…

Don’t really have much problems with staff. Except for certain lazy nurses. I hate lazy nurses.

So yes, it is very stressful job. Why do I do it? Because it pays well / stable / staff is generally nice to work with / you get people who are grateful to you / etc