BDS Final Year - A walkthrough

Final year doesn't require as much studying as it requires clinical knowledge. You should have two goals in your mind while studying for final year.

1. I have to pass the UHS Prof.

2. I need to become a good dental surgeon. 

If your aim is to follow the traditional guidelines set by 'seniors' to pass the UHS exam, you will only achieve that one goal; and on the downside, you will never be able to get this golden time back which you can avail to become a good dentist. Focus on your future. 

Before I begin writing about different subjects, I would stress the importance of one book that is a keeper for a BDS student:

Oxford Handbook of Clinical Dentistry
(Buy this gem, and keep it with you)

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Books to consider:

1. Contemporary Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery by Tucker
2. Surgery by Neelma (Jaypee)
3. Killey's Fracture Notes
4. Handbook of Local Anaesthesia by Stanley Malamed

Strategy: 
This subject requires thorough reading. Start reading the textbook, i.e. Contemporary (by Tucker) as soon as you get to read it. It is a very lengthy but very easy subject to tackle with little or no 'facts' to memorize.

I hated the 'Trauma' portion of the book, which we are supposed to do from Killey's fracture notes. But you have to do it from somewhere, right?

Prosthodontics

Books to consider:

1. McCracken's Removable Partial Prosthodontics
2. Prosthodontic Treatment for edentulous patients (Zarb / Boucher)
3. Textbook of Prosthodontics (Jaypee)

Strategy: 
McCracken for partial denture is a must. If you want to read jaypee for partial, do it after you have completed going through McCracken. This book is that good. For complete denture, you have to do selective topics from Boucher, and selective topics from Jaypee.

Orthodontics

Books to consider: 

1. Proffit
2. Balaji
3. Laura Mitchell
4. Ulfat Bashir for Ceph

Strategy:
Start Ortho from Profit. Don't do development first, start from 'Diagnosis and Treatment Planning'. Then move to Balaji and cover all the topics from there. Go through Profitt and read the captions of as many figures as you can. These captions carry valuable information and are very important to do.

Added by a follower in 2015:
Also it is my suggestion after i have went through the written paper of ortho that bhalaji shouldnt be recommended. I think profitt is the only book a final year student should stick to. Our whole paper was made from profitt and Bhalaji didn't help at all. If someone wants to do bhalaji, they should do only treatments portion from there

Operative Dentistry


I wrote down a separate guide for this subject. Please go through it:

How to study Operative Dentistry for UHS?

Don't miss out on YouTube (http://ytpak,com). It is the best place to find awesome videos that will clear your concepts and help you progress clinically. 

NB: Past papers are important. Questions from Past papers and Model Papers are usually repeated in the both MCQs and SEQs. So please do go through them at least once.