Hi and welcome, or welcome back. You are listening to the Perio Hygienist 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 Episode 75, and the title is Thoughts on Speed Dentistry.
I have a few thoughts to share with you today. The first is dental and the others are reflections both about this Holiday Season and how the character development of humility helps us heal.
Over my forty-plus dental career I have found that my understanding about efficiency in dental practice has changed. Also, in conversations with dental students and dental hygiene students as well as recent graduates, I see that what I thought and felt back then when I was where they are now about my skills and worries about whether or not I would ever get faster in what I was doing turns out to be a pretty much universal experience.
In time, however, I have learned to reframe my problems and concerns and to understand a few things about the practice of dentistry that weren’t initially obvious that have helped me enjoy this profession more with less stress.
I have come to realize that production in practice is not static, meaning we do not earn or collect or produce the same every hour.
And yet, there is this assembly-line mentality that is still very popular in dentistry today.
Putting this another way, I submit to you that the practice of dentistry is not really improved when we focus on trying to get faster over time.
Let me offer you a few tips about the most efficient and effective ways to practice dentistry that I have found.
First, I consider communication one of my most important clinical skills so I think of it in the same way I do other procedures I perform.
I know I have talked about this before, but it bears repeating.
There are tools people can learn in communication in the same way there are instruments we discover that work really well when restoring a tooth.
The more important time saving method of patient care comes at the beginning of our relationship with the patient when we individually sit down and have a real conversation – not rushed, but thorough with the intent of finding out what the patient wants and doesn’t want? What are the patient’s hopes and fears? Rush past this and I may not have this patient for much longer – or I will find the patient continues to want to talk – and stall – as subsequent visits which will slow down treatment progress.
Patients who continue to want to talk and have everything repeatedly explained are likely those who do not trust us because they don’t believe we understand them – and might not understand them because we weren’t listening when we first met them. Therefore, I need to have enough time built into the schedule to talk with a new patient for at least ten to fifteen minutes. This does not include the examination procedure or review of findings. It is a critical time where I and the patient can look each other in the eye. As I listen, I ask questions and when necessary, take good notes.
Let’s step back and try and think about all this from the patient’s perspective.
What are the ways a patient can self-protect in a dental office? – and self-protection is necessary when there is little to no trust that those providing treatment will be gentle and really know what they are doing.
When patients want to stall and to talk it might be because they want to make sure that they are being treated by someone who is clued in to them as a person – not a number. Whenever I attempt to speed up treatment with someone who is afraid, more likely than not, the wheels will come off. Furthermore, if I try to force cooperation because my schedule is running behind, I will be sealing the deal that this patient will ever return again. Every time I lose a loyal or potentially loyal patient it results in thousands of dollars in revenue loss compounded year over year. My impatience can easily blind me to the much bigger picture.
Let me also say this. Patients who trust you will want you to get on with care. They do not want to be any longer in the dental office than is absolutely necessary. This means that if we listen well at first and take good notes we can refer back to earlier conversations with patients later, which then enables us to move forward to care on these subsequent visits quickly. Another way to put this is that we will be more efficient and effective over time with trusting patient when we have invested well in our relationship with them in the first visit or two.
Finally, procedures do become more efficient over time as they are repeated frequently. We will be practicing motor and judgment skills that will have been tested enough to help us relax and become more efficient with less effort on our parts. We will experience the many ways we will need to alter our plans until there are very few surprises left.
Also communication skills after procedures becomes a critical activity.
For example, it is not a problem to attempt to save a tooth and end up being unsuccessful – assuming first we have seen the risks and communicated them clearly with the patient ahead of time as well as after the procedure has been accomplished.
Now let me turn the corner of this podcast to talk about how the holiday season this year is different from earlier ones.
I wrote the following thoughts one day during this past Thanksgiving week of 2024 while on vacation. My purpose for it was to publish it on my Substack at The Still Point Project.
The Still Point Project is my outlet to express myself and I have been putting it out daily for a number of years now.
Soon, I will have a tab on my website that will give brief descriptions of each post as I put them up with a link where you can go and read them. I have many who wake up to having these in their email inboxes. All they did was subscribe by entering their email addresses. I offer free subscriptions so feel free to check it out.
As a Nation, we almost disappeared.
We came as close to losing our love and pride for being Americans, for loving one another, and for our history than we ever have in the past 248 years. This includes considering the Civil War — which was a hyper-patriotism of a sort — both sides wanting the Nation to be defined on their terms.
Following World War II we experienced the loss of wars, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and the slow rise of affluence brought by the Silicon Age which has resulted in us, as a country of middle class tax payers, experiencing two opposing results.
On the one hand our lives became easier and seemingly less dependent on others, while at the same time becoming more controlled by bigger, deeper, broader man-manipulated world forces than ever before.
This resulted in greater psychological manipulation — to the point, in fact, that we could be at war, struggling for our lives along with our decedents’ security and prosperity while at the same time not really knowing it.
We have been experiencing warfare waged by hidden enemies foreign and domestic intent on erasing every right we were bequeathed by our national founding documents.
This was the plan of The Great Reset. It came with biowarfare, catastrophic economic transfers of wealth and the opening of our boarders to people with little knowledge of our heritage or any interest in protecting and preserving. No borders, no country.
To overcome all of this it was necessary for the American people to experience a Great Awakening.
I think the pivot point came on July 13, 2024 when we almost witnessed on live TV the assassination of Donald Trump immediately followed with his historic response when he stood back up and pumped his fist.
“Fight, fight, fight!” was his awakening cry.
This shot heard around the world dissolved politics as usual. No longer did the usual petty differences between political parties matter anymore.
There has come a realignment between the vast once asleep self-interested majority and a deeply entrenched system willing to use that majority’s best intentions against them in order to keep control of the national levers of power.
Had things turned out differently, had those who had been in power coming out of elite universities, been able to continue unchallenged in their unelected and elected positions through their crony and often illegal relationships between academia, business, entertainment, government and non-government positions, we might have lived to witness the complete destruction of our country. It was slip-sliding away, not with a bang, but a whimper.
And with the death of our country would have gone the loss of our holidays — not their dates and perhaps definitional meanings — but their significance and importance as societal connectors. You see, holidays serve our national interest by identifying what we as Americans stand for.
With the rise of a global godless elite, Thanksgiving has been under attack for a long time. There are always those who seek its replacement with something non-spiritual, less God-centered and family oriented. Pawns of the state don’t need such a day.
The same people want Christmas to become more marginalized than it already is. They support it only as a means of heightening commerce and further debt enslavement. The baby in the manager is actually the antidote they deeply wish to eliminate.
You take it from here. List all the National Holidays and see how important they are as well as how they are under constant attack.
So, be grateful this Thanksgiving to be living in one of the freest countries in the world.
We are not perfect, but we continue to be endowed with blessings from God as well as the responsibilities to mankind that this entails. Hopefully we as a nation are no longer asleep to the fact that liberty is fragile and can be easily lost.
Here is one more post I wrote recently entitled: Humility is the Great Healer
Let me explain.
When I humble myself I admit I don’t know what is best or have what it takes to solve many of my own problems.
Those problems I can solve I have usually been taught how by others, so even in this case it is truthful to humbly admit my appreciation for the help of others enabling me to be as independent in life as I can be.
To be humble when I am sick means I won’t stubbornly shut myself away only to get worse. Yes, there are times when I might get poor advice from others. Life is not without risk, but even in these instances, I can choose to humble myself by asking for God’s guidance. This doesn’t mean that God owes me a pain and problem free life, but it does mean I will not go through things alone.
Humility opens up healing in relationships because I no longer have to win. I can let go at times. I can forgive and not hold grudges. Without humility I am prideful and foolish, these are never good pathways to a happier healthier life.
Too bad humility gets such a bad rap by so many self-help experts and gurus today.
Here’s a practical tip. Avoid seeking advice from anyone who is into self promotion. This eliminates a lot of self-promoting social influencers, authors, and media personalities.
Here’s the New Living Translation of Psalm 91.
Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
This I declare about the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him.
For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease.
He will cover you with his feathers.
He will shelter you with his wings.
His faithful promises are your armor and protection.
Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night,
nor the arrow that flies in the day.
Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday.
Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you.
Just open your eyes, and see how the wicked are punished.
If you make the LORD your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home.
For he will order his angels to protect you wherever you go.
They will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.
You will trample upon lions and cobras; you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!
The LORD says, “I will rescue those who love me.
I will protect those who trust in my name.
When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble.
I will rescue and honor them.
I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.”
Well, that’s it for today.
This has been The Perio Hygienist Podcast, and I am still Dr. Ben Young.
Thanks for listening.
Bye for now.
