"Patients carry their own doctor inside. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the physician who resides within each patient a chance to go to work."

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Philosophy

If you have gotten this far in this site you are either curious, or perhaps searching for greater satisfaction in dentistry. If it is greater satisfaction you want, please read on. If what you read has any attraction for you, please come back often. This may be the most helpful section on this web-site and, like the rest of the clinical tip section, will be under constant construction.

The satisfaction that the clinician gets from placing a technically excellent restoration is relatively short-lived. Frankly, like it or not, the patient has little understanding of the difference between dentistry that is performed with high skill and dentistry done poorly. But they have vivid and long- term memory about the human interaction that led to those procedures being performed and the way in which these services were provided.

In our intake process with new people in our practice it is not uncommon for people to become very emotional or even cry as they recount previous experiences in other offices. These unpleasant experiences usually have little to do with physical pain but rather the emotional pain of situations in which these patients report feeling ignored, manipulated, or otherwise emotionally controlled by their previous office.

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We live in a world where dysfunctional relationships seem to be the norm. We each have our own agendas that we attempt to inflict on others who, in turn, consciously or unconsciously resist this attempted control. It starts at an early age, based on behavioral patterns that are handed down from generation to generation, and ends up in a dental office where it creates the highest portion of the stress that is daily manifested in a professional office.

This control-resistance pattern in a dental office looks something like this: The clinician fresh from a practice management workshop and excited about his/her new production goals sees Mrs. Jones for her exam, which has followed her hygiene visit. Mrs. Jones, who has just received her recurrent, six month's flossing lecture, and is feeling a little scolded, gets to hear how she really needs to have a crown (or a CEREC fabricated) restoration on her tooth. Mrs. Jones, feeling no pain in her tooth, but definitely a little humiliated from the flossing lecture, reluctantly agrees to schedule her appointment for the tooth to be fixed. At this point, since she did not participate in the process, Mrs. Jones has absolutely no ownership in the decision to repair her tooth. This scenario can be completed in an infinite number of ways, but none will have any value in the enhancement of the dentist-patient relationship. We all experience the end products of these kinds of interactions. They range from missed appointments to delayed payments and almost everything conceivable in between.
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There is a better way.

These unpleasant situations can be avoided. Make no mistake about it; it takes time, energy and a significant willingness to change. This willingness to change usually does not come until the clinician has repeatedly experienced the consequences and the pain of not changing. We all spend much time climbing the ladder only to realize, as Stephen Covey puts it in his book "The Seven Secrets of Highly Effective People", that the ladder is propped up against the wrong wall.

This process of change, while difficult, will lead to happier relations in all aspects of our lives. Just as it is difficult to improve clinically without outside help, (we all go to continuing education workshops don't we?) it is difficult to make behavioral changes without outside help. Hopefully this section of the web-site will be a source of help, but it will take me many more hours of introspective typing to offer more than a "tease". Also feel free to visit our office website. There, in the "About us" section, you will get more of an idea of how we go about our work.

If you have read this far you clearly have some interest in a better way. Again, please come back often. With a little time, this portion of the site will be much more developed. Until then, let me recommend as a resource, Mary Osborne, who can be reached at (206) 937-5851 (please e-mail for a complementary copy of her newsletter) or go to maryosborne.com/. Mary is a gifted facilitator, who can offer much to a dental office team. Mary happens to have worked with two of the CEREC trainers and has presented at an Academy of Computerized Dentistry national meeting, so she is more than familiar with the unique gifts that the clinician with a CEREC can offer their patients.
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