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In some of the job interviews to hire professional collaborators that I have carried out in recent times, I have come across dentists who freely and with interest presented their merits in a curriculum dotted with masters and postgraduate degrees. . Wrapped and protected by paper, they argued their ability based on the documents they presented almost as a safe-conduct to the world of work. It is so difficult to find a job without experience and so difficult to have experience without working that one way to make everything easier is to present a master's degree or an expert degree. We already see it. These are bad times to display so many qualifications of such diverse origin, some of dubious reliability.

The question of the false formation, which the broadcast media of one color and another air so interestedly in these times, is not trivial. The educational system created At the time, there were validation mechanisms that guaranteed the seriousness of the knowledge acquired and the reliability and ethics of the institutions and professors who imparted that knowledge.

Here you are. that in recent times courses, masters, experts, specialists and other specimens have flourished that, escaping the desirable control, have come to give the professional torticero what society demands and when it demands it. That is to say: “I want the most and I want it now”.

"The idea should prevail in our profession that what merits a master's degree is not the degree itself, but the concepts acquired and the effort made"

In some cases, seen what has been seen, distorting the concept of “master“, which seeks to train teachers, gentlemen of knowledge, to quickly create characters with pretensions that, not Being able to achieve with their effort what the honest and responsible man normally achieves in this way, they have discovered an anomalous way to justify what they are not.

Our profession is not exempt from these risks. The networks and their post-truths, the bombastic titles, the copy/paste, the unbridled marketing, favor obtaining the confidence of the environment and self-confidence through ways that are not always daily work and effort. everyday.

The enormous investments, sometimes I think that they are too enormous, in training that achieving excellence in dentistry entail, lend themselves by some to expecting, when not demanding, favorable results in the evaluation of dental procedures. merits.

Statistical logic should show that in an academic training, a percentage of students obtain good results but also a percentage of them require twice the time, effort and money to achieve the same goals. Or you don't get them. That is why obtaining a master's degree should be the certificate of access to excellence in a specific subject and not the way to acquire skills that were not acquired at the time, a kind of continuation of the career, or what is worse, the way to achieve professional recognition without having done merits for it.

Our dentists must be careful to select their training for the rigor of the teaching content, the value of the professors and the quality of the teaching and not look for quick and easy shortcuts.

Even apart from this obviousness, the idea should prevail in our profession that what merits a master's degree is not the title itself. , but the concepts acquired and the effort made . In the same way, the guarantors of teaching quality have no choice but to exercise extreme vigilance in order to avoid what is currently happening. happening.

I hope Lastly, our patients must be careful when assessing us and do not let themselves be carried away without too much rigor by the lights, the brilliance and the titles that surround our profession. In short, the big problem is, as always, knowing how to separate the chaff from the grain, and all this without presuming that you know how to do it.

MANUEL RIBERA URIBE PROFESSOR OF GERODONTOLOGY AND SPECIAL PATIENTS INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF CATALUNYA

**Translated with Google Translate