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  How Specialization Can Both Help and Hinder Your Service to Others Date: June 4, 2025 Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none”? It’s something I’ve often heard applied to general dentists. For specialists, you might say the reverse is true—but with a twist: “Lack of all trades, master…

Don’t Wait for Perfect Circumstances As an independent contractor, I work with a group of dentists who hire me to perform their surgeries. This means I operate in several dental offices that I don’t own. While the work runs smoothly overall, there are small aspects of this arrangement I can’t control. One of the biggest?…

When I was a first-year oral surgery resident, I had two great chief residents who became tremendous mentors to me. One of them, Ryan, was in his final year of residency—but it was also his first year at our program, just like me. The year before, he had been in his third year of residency…

Every day, somewhere in the world, a medical mistake happens that causes real, sometimes devastating, consequences for a patient. On a recent podcast episode, I shared the story of a closed-claim case that perfectly illustrates this. A young, healthy teenager — a softball player, excited for her upcoming senior prom — was referred to an…

In the movie Inception, which explores the concept of dreaming in a world where technology allows people to hack into and alter dreams, Leonardo DiCaprio explains a fascinating concept that is part of our everyday lives. He uses a simple circle diagram formed by two curved arrows to describe the mysterious process of dreaming. In…

By Grant Stucki DDS, MS   Recently, I came across a patient case that I think is worth recounting—not just because of how it ended, but because of all the lessons hiding in the chaos. Here’s the run-down: A 76-year-old man developed pericoronitis on a partially impacted wisdom tooth (#32). He saw an oral surgeon,…

Grace Under Pressure Galvanizes By: Grant Stucki, Oral Surgeon So here’s what happened. A dentist referred a patient to me for the extraction of an upper canine tooth. She said, “I tried to take it out yesterday… for like, an hour… but couldn’t get it. I got the crown off, but the root wouldn’t budge.”…

The other day, I was at church talking with a couple of friends. We were discussing a third friend who was going through something tough. I mentioned I could reach out to him via text or phone call. Without me even asking, both of my friends said they would prefer a phone call. I paused…