Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

In the dental surgery it can be the clinicians fear that is the greatest enemy Dentists should be weary about using ‘filters’ when providing treatment plans 25Practice ManagementJanuary 16-22, 2012United Kingdom Edition legal rules. The enemy within here is fear, and not the patient’s but the clinician’s! And so the fil- ter gets applied and the pa- tient is offered the treatment plan that the clinician believes is absolutely “necessary” or the one they feel the patient “needs”. Presumably, they leave the rest until it becomes (as they deem it), “necessary” or “needed”. An additional fil- ter (of course) is the one that pushes the dentist towards of- fering treatments that are well paid or earn the most number of UDAs. So, before anyone rushes off to the moral high ground and starts sending me emails beginning, “how very dare you”, let me run this analogy past you: Imagine putting your three-year-old, £25,000 car in for a 30,000-mile service. During the course of this, the technician discovers that as well as the regular service items needed, your car also has these faults: • Two sets of worn brake pads • Front brake discs are warped • Rear dampers are leaking • Two tyres are nearly at their worn out marks As a customer, which of these phone calls would you like them to make? 1The call that lists the faults, your options and the costs for having everything put right? 2The call that tells you about the faults they think you will want to hear? 3The call that tells you about the faults that you will be able to see? 4The call that tells you about the faults they think you will be willing to have fixed? 5The call that tells you about the faults that makes them the biggest margin when they repair them? And what will they do about the faults they don’t tell you about? Perhaps, put a “watch” on their records and consider telling you at the next service? Duty of care I know that some of you will be wincing already at my comparison between a clini- cian and a mechanic but wait, there’s more “mileage” in this analogy still to come. After paying for just the service, you drive off from the garage with the faults left un- reported. A child runs out in front of your car and you fail to stop in time because of the worn tyres/brake pads/discs/ dampers. In the investiga- tion that follows, these things come to light and spark a witch-hunt. A good garage owner dares not risk this and the in- evitable damage to their rep- utation. A good garage must tell you exactly what it finds wrong with your car. A good garage takes their duty of care seriously. So what’s really going wrong when a patient leaves a dental surgery with half a treatment plan? In my opin- ion, this happens because we’ve lost the simple, straight- forward, trusting relationship between patient and clinician that we had as a final year stu- dent. External circumstances such as the NHS, the econo- my, the practice finances and probably most importantly, our lack of confidence and self-esteem, have filtered our behaviour so that we agree to compromise our professional skill set and integrity in order to be liked, keep the patient or stay within our comfort zone. So, how does that sound? Not so great from where I’m sitting and let’s not tell the na- tional newspapers! When I left the NHS in 1992, I decided to get rid of all the filters I had acquired and simply show and tell my patients what I could do for them as if they were one of my family and money and time wasn’t an issue. I’ve used exactly the same approach in my coaching practice. I was lucky enough to be mentored by some great coaches on the idea that you often do your best coaching just before you get fired (for telling it like it is). And that’s what I do for our clients. In my view, you have to de- cide what sort of dentist you want to be: • An anxious single unit one tooth at a time type dentist, forever destined to gross a thousand pounds a day whilst complaining that patients don’t want my treatment • Or a dentist who commu- nicates clearly and straight- forwardly with their patients about what they can see in their mouths and the best way to fix it. Thereby giving the pa- tients back their responsibility for their health and leaving the decision about whether to proceed with them As Steve Jobs said in 2005: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t set- tle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great re- lationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” DT About the author Simon Hocken, Director of Coach- ing at Breathe Business, has a wealth of experi- ence as a success- ful private dentist, practice owner and business coach. Over the last 10 years Simon and the highly experi- enced Breathe Team have worked with more than 700 dental practices helping them to develop and grow. If you would like some help with effective patient communication or improving your self-confidence… Call Breathe Business on 0845 299 7209 ‘Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relation- ship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle’ Steve Jobs