What’s your ‘Favorite 5’?

What are your 5 favorite dental procedures to perform?  What is it that gets you charged up when you see it on your schedule and you get pumped that you’ll get a chance to do it?  Is it extractions?  Perio surgery?  Maybe endo?  Whatever it is it’s a good idea to take some time and figure it out.

Let me suggest writing down your top five procedures.  This will give you an idea of what you should be spending your time doing.  If you’re enjoying the work, you’ll probably do it better and your patient will have a better experience during it as well.

Once you've identified what it is you love to do, invest in some CE in that area.  It’ll give you even more confidence and that’s something young dentists could use more of.  If you can get the five procedures you love doing to be your most confident procedures, then you can expand your comfort zone out to more complicated procedures that you've been dying to try.

Honing your ‘Favorite 5’ will lead to

                1.  Increased confidence

                2.  Increased speed

                3.  More enjoyable days

                4.  Better patient interaction

So what are your ‘Favorite 5’?

What CE Should Young Dentists Take?

Hi All.  As a young dentist you can probably remember the last time you walked out of dental school 'never to return again.' You most likely ran for your car as if the building was on fire and you never wanted to go back.  But in our profession you may have left the classroom but you should never stop learning.  

You've got a lot on your plate with paying back loans, saving for a practice, possibly thinking marriage or children and putting money up for CE might seem like a stretch that could pull a muscle.  We should look at dental giants, those who we look up to at school and ask... "how did they get to be so smart?"  They never stopped learning and neither should we.

Listed below are some of the most worthwhile CE courses you can take to beef-up your knowledge burger.

DOCS Training  
Dental Oral Conscious Sedation - about $2,400 for a course on how to treat 'dental phobics' by sedating them.  This is a GREAT idea for a young dentist because if 50% of people don't go to the dentist and the 50% that do already have a dentist, if you can treat dental phobics, you have less people competing with you in that marketplace.  

Invisalign
One way to set yourself apart from an older dentist you work with is to become the office expert in Invisalign.  The course is about $2,000.

6 Month Smiles
Lots of people want a beautiful smile but few adults want to go through the lengthy treatments of years of ortho to get it.  6 Month Smiles teaches you to move anterior teeth for a great esthetic result.

Sleep Apnea 
$650-1000 depending on who gives it.  You can look for courses fro Glidewell or the AADSM (American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine).  This is a great 'clean' (no blood/drilling) procedure you can do to treat  sleep apnea which is as common as Type II Diabetes.  Just be mindful of your state rules (depending on the State Board's position in some states a physician must make the diagnosis and then you can treat)

American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
Annual Scientific Session - 4 days of fantastic CE for a little over $1,000 depending on if you've graduated in the past 2 years.  You'll be surrounded by people that take the artistic aspect of the profession very seriously.

Spear Institute / Pankey Institute
Great continuums that will set out a path of what to learn now that you've graduated.  They're structured enough to give you guidance but you can cherry-pick the courses you're most interested in.  Cost varies on what you take.

Implants
Dr. Leonard Linkow placed the first dental implant in 1952 four months after he graduated dental school.  So what are we waiting for?! Implants are a great solution for treatment planning and keeping things in-house instead of referring them out keeps money in the bank.  Again cost will vary depending on the type and length of the program.  In this case I would stress more is better, there is a lot to learn here and paying extra for additional education is probably worth it in the long run.

Really what you'd like to do in your first few years out it set the stage for a successful career.  Learn as many procedures as you can and find ways to make yourself unique for patients.


This is the first blog post.  Here it starts.  Hope you enjoyed.