Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 2

Changing Lanes In 1991, Dr. Lesia Waschuk walked out of the faculty of dentistry at the University of Toronto (U of T) with her DDS degree in hand, the first step onwhat promised to be a lengthy career as a practising dental professional. Seven years later, she would make the career‑changing decision to stop practising and enter the world of organized dentistry as a part-time monitoring officer, with the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO). Then 22 years after that, she decided to go back to clinical practice. In summing up just how that feels, “in a word,” she says, “ terrifying! ” Dr. Lesia Waschuk’s Return to Practice Dr. Lesia Waschuk T errifying as it may be, it is clear from Dr. Waschuk’s poise that this is not a decision that has been taken lightly. Like everything else in her life and career to date, I get the impression that this move has been carefully thought through, down to every last detail. As part of the first generation of an immigrant family in Canada, Dr. Waschuk says there was always pressure from her parents to go into a profession of some kind. Her father came as a child to North America by way of the displaced persons’ camp at Mittenwald, Germany, following WWII, and became a mechanical engineer and later a mathematics teacher. Her mother was a practising pharmacist who was accepted into medical school but turned it down because she felt it would compromise her commitment to being a mother. “My parents counselled me to go into a health profession because they thought it would lead to a secure life and a meaningful life,” says Dr. Waschuk. Like her mother, for a time Dr. Waschuk considered becoming a physician but then changed her mind when the government banned extra billing under OHIP. “My decision was less about billing and more about the idea of governmental control,” she says. “Being from a family that had fled communism, government control was something to be feared. And part of the reason I wanted to be a health professional was so that I could control my own destiny.” What I thought I wanted in a career and in a lifestyle, and the reasons why I went into dentistry in particular, turned out not to be what I wanted. 24 | 2021 | Issue 2