Life's Context » Office

How To Poorly Manage a Dental Office: Your Inner Voice.

Periapex — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:19:10 +0000

Let your inner voice have complete freedom. Allow others to know everything you’re thinking.

From a patient that I saw yesterday for a consultation:

I’m with a new dentist now. I left my previous dentist because one day when she was drilling my tooth and you could smell that tooth dust smell she told her assistant that that was the smell of money.

How To Poorly Manage a Dental Office: Refer.

Periapex — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:21:38 +0000

Action: When referring a patient to a specialist, and the specialist’s office says that they are booking 2 months down the road, get on the phone personally and demand to know how many hours per week the specialist works. Something like this is particularly effective: “Two months!? How many days a week do you work? One??”

This scores your office lots of fuck you points and pretty much guarantees that if you try to refer other patients in the future they’ll probably have to wait even longer. Why not teach the specialist “a lesson” by not referring any further patients to them.

How To Poorly Manage a Dental Office: Reuse.

Periapex — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:37:43 +0000

Action: You know the excess pieces of composite resin that you remove while grossly shaping the filling prior to curing it? Well why not save those pieces under a dark dappen dish to use on your next patient that needs a filling.

This will actually be your next patient because all of your patients these days seem to need pit and fissure fillings for some reason. Could that reason have anything to do with the fact that you’re planning on putting your practice up for sale soon and want to show prospective purchasers high production numbers?

People and Their Jobs.

Periapex — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:39:00 +0000

I’ve worked for people, under people, with people, and been in charge of people. I’ve also read lots of resumes and CVs.

Isn’t it funny how some people think that a fancy job title makes them more important? I’ve actually used this point to my advantage when hiring. There is a surplus of dental auxiliaries looking for jobs with fancy “management” titles. So much so that the best staff I’ve ever found, who are a pleasure to work with and who do an effective job, are the ones who appreciate the job for what it is and not what it’s called.

A job ad for a Treatment Coordinator that leaves out the name of the position but instead describes the successful candidate as a people-person, team-player, analytic, needing X amount of experience in a dental office, etc. will produce many different resumes than a job posting for a “Director of Treament Coordination”, who will be “in charge of”, “manage”, “oversee”.

The dental office environment demands a team approach with every member helping each other. If one person feels that because they are the “manager” they should only be telling people what to do, the system breaks down and poor morale develops.

Patients see all of this. It reflects badly on the dentist because everything in a dental office trickles down from the top. If patients pick up poor staff morale, what do you think they’ll think of your actual dentistry?

Dentistry is not the only place that works best with a team approach of course. Practically any work environment needs this.

Interviewers for potential dental school candidates often will attempt to assess if the interviewee has leadership ability. At an interview level this really just translates to confidence and past acomplishments in organisations.

I’ve never been interested in leading people and yet have been put in this role uncountable times. I can’t tell you how well I manage staff, but the success of my office on a personal level satisfies me that I’m doing something well.

There are two lessons that I learned about being a manager that will forever rule me.

The first is through a job that I had at a camera/photofinishing store when I was in my first year of university. The store manager gained my respect and my desire to help him do his job simply by doing as much of the work that was required of us himself. He would ask for help as needed. Ask not tell. He led by example to the point that we employees took on responsibilities willingly because we saw how busy he made himself as he was pulled in many different directions. We genuinely wanted to help him. Does he sound like an ineffective manager? Was his day too scattered to properly “manage” the store? Shouldn’t he have properly delegated jobs?

Nope. His management strategy was the most effective I’ve ever worked under.

The second lesson that I learned was during my endo program. The dental assistants were arguing among themselves about whose fault it was that some item was not working properly. The argument wasn’t heated but had gone on for at least 5 minutes. I needed a functional version of the same item for the case I was working on.

Practically without thinking I left my op, went over to the staff and told them to blame me for the broken item. I told them to tell their boss that they could come and talk to me about it. Then I said that I really needed a working one.

Each of them blinked at me in surprise then ran off in different directions to find me what I needed. To this day they still remember me and “what a nice resident I was”.

Good management empowers staff and helps them to appreciate the job they have. The team effort that results minimizes the actual need to “manage” and maximizes a positive, enjoyable work environment.

– Periapex, Supreme Director of Endodontic Therapy, Workland, Ontario, Canada.

How to Poorly Manage a Dental Office: Conserve.

Periapex — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:40:00 +0000

Action: Assign a supervisory staff member (usually the hygiene or treatment co-ordinator or office manager) to dispense minute quantities of prophy paste to hygienists when they are ready to polish.

This ensures that you save money because the hygienists are not wasting prophy paste.

How to Poorly Manage a Dental Office: Vent.

Periapex — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:58:00 +0000

This is Part 1 of likely an infinite number of points that I’ll relate from experience (some mistakes that I’ve made, others that I’ve seen made). The points are self explanatory. The consequences vary, but unfortunately for many of us dentists, our egos are too large to learn from them, and so we blame others for their behaviour that caused us to do the action in the first place.

Action: Throw instruments (the sharper the better) at your assistant because you are frustrated with the patient or the case.

Conversation with the Office Manager.

Ameloblast — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:31:00 +0000

She’s coming off a year of maternity leave.

She: So is the patient coming back for work?

Me: Yeah I think so.

She: A pulpectomy or pulpotomy?

Me: What’s the difference–

She, cutting me off as she busily shuffles her paperwork around: One is all the way down the canal, and the other is only part way.

Me, pausing confused: Umm…yeah..thanks for the endo lesson. I know the difference that way. I meant what’s the difference in cost…?

She: Oh.

New Remote Release.

Ameloblast — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:22:00 +0000

I caved in and bought a cheap remote shutter release from Ebay the other day for the Nikon (the remote is made in China). Using the remote, I can lock exposure settings prior to framing the shot and also minimize camera shake by not having to push the button on the camera itself.

Any shaking of the scope gets magnified a gizillion times. This is my first test shot. It’s an upper 6 showing DB and the two MBs.

Answers.

Ameloblast — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:49:00 +0000

Here are some answers to recent questions:

I have a digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 990) attached to my microscope. The scope is off to the left of the following picture. There’s also a video cam hooked up to the scope for my assistant to monitor what I’m doing. I’d rather have an intraoral camera than the Nikon hookup though.

I use my Canon SD500 camera for the other photos that I post.

I don’t have digital radiography in the office so I use an Epson scanner that has a transparency adapter to scan in xrays. I used to take pictures of xrays off the viewbox if I wanted them digitized. This worked decently, but requires a good knowledge of the camera’s exposure settings and some image manipulation on the computer. This was useful when I used to teach and didn’t have a scanner handy when some interesting xray came along.