Hi there. You are listening to the Perio Patient Podcast, a podcast for my patients and anyone else who cares to listen. My name is Dr. Ben Young, and I am a periodontist in private practice in San Antonio, Texas. This is podcast Episode 64 and I have entitled it “Roadblocks and Enemies.”
Welcome if this is your first time listening. Otherwise, welcome back.
This will be brief because it can be. And I simply want to give you a few thoughts that you might be able to apply in your own life. Long ago in my career, I had to establish for myself, and my assistant both in the military and later in private practice, how we think about the care we provide, and I came up with the idea about talking about roadblocks and enemies. It’s kind of a military thing I guess.
When we encounter roadblocks, what do we do? We try to get around them of course. Knock them down or get around them somehow. We try to figure out ways to get to our destination in spite of the fact that we might even have to take a few detours along the way. What is our emotional response to roadblocks? That’s a good question and hopefully we can see them as unemotionally as possible. It’s sort of like the red light, we can be frustrated we have to stop, but eventually and hopefully we don’t feel at the red lights. If you do then get help. Life can be much better than it is for you.
What about enemies? Do we have any? I do in my profession. But they aren’t people, no one as far as I can tell is trying to take me out because of my job. People, when they are difficult or confusing, are not my enemy. They may be roadblocks, even for themselves, but they are not enemies. They may attempt to deter me from what I’m trying to do, provide good care to patients. But there are no deep, sinister motives that I can tell.
So, here are my two enemies professionally. My first enemy is disease and the second one is the ignorance that cloaks it. So what should be my response to enemies? The answer is to do the best I can to defeat them, and how do I defeat these enemies? Well, The first one requires dedication to studying and applying therapeutics in technology as they show to improve treatment throughout outcomes over time. The second one requires Constant striving to communicate clearly, that’s my practice principle number one. And repetitively that’s practice principal number two and to accept myself and others in a good level of skepticism, Practice principal number three. Because this helps us overcome our ignorance. Be skeptical and always investigate. And that’s it let me know what you think.
This has been the Perio Patient Podcast and I am still Dr. Ben Young. If you like this podcast, feel free to like and share. Also, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. Thanks for listening. Let’s talk again soon. Bye for now.
