Dear Alan,
I recently had a patient who was the living embodiment of two of the seven deadly sins (sloth and gluttony). Things were going well until I tried to raise the chair. The chair failed to budge. The obese patient was left stranded like a beached whale with arms flailing searching for something to grab onto. He could still be there but my assistant managed to push him onto the floor whereby he grabbed hold of the chair and pulled himself up. My question is. Do they make bigger chairs for today’s bigger patients?” Regards, The chair I have can lift 175kgs. There are people who weigh more than this but it is more likely the motor in the chair was failing. Don’t blame some poor victim of the marketing arm of multinational food conglomerates when all he is doing is telling you the motor in your chair is starting to fail. Dear Alan, I have recently moved to Sydney. How do I decide which orthodontist to refer my patients to? Orthodontists are different. I mean they are all different from each other. I don’t mean they are different from normal people. They differ in personality; the way they run their practices and in their area of interest. To find out you need to start referring to the local orthodontists and looking at their patient management. The other way is to go and visit then in their surgeries. Spend time talking to them and watching them work. As you have a variety of patients with a variety of needs you should refer to several different orthodontists. There are multiple benefits in doing this. Different patients should be referred to different orthodontists based on the idea that each patient should go to the best orthodontists for that particular patient. The other way to do it is to refer to the guy you went to Uni with. Not as stupid as it sounds. You need someone you can communicate with. It is easier to ring and discuss a patient if you share memories of a noisy, smoky room full of drunken testosterone charged students; late night souvlaki in Carlton and a hatred of certain Cons demonstrators. It is called bonding and has nothing to with phosphoric acid. Dear Alan, I have a cute patient, with a relaxed smile, who always thanks me and brightens the surgery. I’d love to do a few more fissure sealants, but my wife working in reception refuses to make her an appointment saying she takes months to pay her bill. How do I get to see her? Regards Powerless. Answer: Ring her up and tell her you need to meet to discuss her oral hygiene. Suggest somewhere a little less clinical. Maybe a local coffee shop or pub. Sounds like you might have to pay the bill. Dear Alan, A patient rings up and says, “The filling you have just placed has just fallen out?” What do I say? Regards, Answer: There are three possibilities. An unrelated filling on the other side of the mouth has fallen out. Not directly your fault. But it is possible you indirectly precipitated the loss. When you filled the aforementioned tooth you ground the occlusion and put the force elsewhere and bingo. A scrap piece of amalgam or composite has hidden itself and resurfaced later. The tooth is sensitive and will settle down. A reasonable assumption that sensitivity is caused by something falling out. There is the fourth possibility that the filling you just placed has fallen out. I know what you’re thinking. Nup never happens but it is possible and in fact it did happen to me once. I had to fess up and redo the filling. Before redoing the filling stop, think and work out why the filling came out. No point putting back exactly the same filling.
0 Comments
Dear Alan,
When I greet my patients and ask them, ‘How are you?’ they reply with, “Alright until I saw you.” Why do people say this? Do they think it is funny and that I am going to laugh? Regards Unloved. Answer: I have a few suggestions for you. You could respond in kind with, “Funny you should say that but, I was feeling alright until I saw you.” You could be self-righteous and say, “Well I’m really happy to see you.” You could act like a prima donna master chef and say, “That’s it I’m just not going to work unless I’m in the mood” and walk out leaving the aforementioned patient mute and begging for you to return. My personal favourite is to ignore the comment, change the subject and add 10% to the bill. Dear Alan, Every time I go into reception I move an aspidistra to its correct position. When I return the plant has always gravitated back to where it was? Is this a case of walking plants? Regards Baffled. Answer: I suspect your receptionist is moving the plant. There isn’t much point owning a dental practice unless you can randomly and erratically exercise some authority. Wait until the waiting room is full of patients then while pacing up and down loudly rant and scream sarcastically. Finish by picking up the plant and throwing it at her. This will make you feel a whole lot better and hopefully the plant will break and you can get rid of it. Dear Alan, I have a young female patient who needs veneers. How do I convince her that this is what she needs? Regards Cosmetic Dentist. Answer: Tell her that after she has the veneers done she will land a job as a model; become a reality TV star; attract hoards of followers on twitter; secure the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster and marry Geoffrey Edelston. Dear Alan, My practice is not busy. How should I go about marketing it? Regards ‘Not Very Busy’. Answer: What you need is a marketing strategy that can be incorporated into your business plan. A plan applied to your practice so that feasible opportunities to produce positive outcomes can be realised and then levered. An integrated marketing plan that has an internal component for your existing patients and an external component to attract new patients. A plan that helps you differentiate your practice to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Then again come to think of it all the good dentists I know don’t need a marketing plan. Their work markets their practice. You may be quiet because your work is rubbish. Any marketing based on poor quality goods will give your practice an artificial boost in the short term but ultimately do nothing. You could be one of those dentists doing the general public a service by not being busy. You could be a physically dyslexic, immoral, lazy, slothful alcoholic who does more harm than good. If you are then accept your fate in life. You are a loser and will never be busy. But you can still be a loser who has not wasted thousands of dollars on marketing. Save your money. There are some things you cannot polish. Dear Alan, Unfortunately a salesperson will sometimes arrive when I’m not busy. I then have to manipulate the truth by telling Beryl I am too busy to see them. This lying makes me feel guilty. How can I absolve my guilt? Regards Guilty Dear Guilty, Answer: This salesperson has just driven for hours with a headache through horrendous traffic; lugged their samples up stairs while checking their voice mail messages and stuffed their half eaten lunch into your pot plants. The least you can do is speak to them. They are just doing their job. One day you will need them. Go and listen to them. Treat them with respect. Be polite. Accept their brochures and wait until they leave before throwing them in the bin. Dear Alan,
I have just placed an on-line ad; watched my in-box overflow; glanced at multiple identical applications; interviewed six applicants; found my procedure manual; filled out mega forms and employed a new dental assistant. After two weeks she left in a hurry, mumbling something about weird control freaks; you should be locked up and on her way out accidently knocked over the delicious monster scattering soil everywhere. How do I avoid the same thing happening again? Regards, “Here we go again.” Answer: Move the delicious monster away from the door. Dear Alan, I have a member of staff who cannot sit still. While eating my lunch she will start sweeping up all of my crumbs. The slightest pause in the day and she is away arranging magazines into neat piles. She will then move onto the kitchen. She cleans and arranges the cups into a neat little row with their handles all at the same 45 degrees. I have done my best to foil her. I will scatter the magazines. I will follow her and sneakily move a cup askance. Point it the opposite direction. When she notices this she blissfully straightens the cups again and then rapidly moves on. I am at my wits end. I dream of her disappearing into a cloud of steam from the autoclave leaving behind only her immaculately clean shoes and a used chux. What can I do? I don’t think I can fire her. Regards, “Frazzled” Answer: You have Irritating Nurse Syndrome. A dentist working full time with the one assistant will spend more time with her than their partner. Prevention is better than cure. Don’t employ someone who will irritate you. Next time you interview job applicants go for the one you feel comfortable with. The one you would like to prefer to sit and watch TV with. Never be influenced by amount of experience, résumés, the quality of the application, or their interview. Experience often has to be unlearned. Everybody has a good resume—which they didn’t write. Good answers in the interview often means they have applied for lots of jobs. Go for personality or gut instinct everytime. This assessment starts when they walk in the door and will take less time than it takes to set 3 mm of A3 composite resin. As you say it is difficult to fire her. If you can’t fire her then you can either begin to enjoy her eccentricities—see her as strange and interesting like an animal in a David Attenborough documentary—or hope she finds your crumbs so annoying she resigns. Dear Alan, A mouse ran across the surgery floor and my assistant screamed making the patient anxious? How do I stop my assistant from screaming whenever she sees a mouse? Regards “Animal lover” Answer: Buy a mouse trap. Next time she screams load the trap and place her fingers in it. A few bruised fingers and she will learn her lesson. Dear Alan, A new dentist has just opened up across the road. He has done a letter drop, has big signs and ads on the radio. How do I compete? Regards, “Worried” Choose your own answer: Answer No 1: Good dentistry. Answer No 2: You have or should have lots of advantages. Reliable, dependable, well know, secure. The other dentist has to overcome these disadvantages. His advantage is he is new fresh and up-to-date. He somehow has to prove he is secure, reliable and dependable. You have to prove you are up-to-date. If you are doing modern state of the art dentistry then you really shouldn’t have to tell anybody. It will be obvious. If you aren’t then you deserve to be worried. Answer No 3: You are asking the wrong question. Don’t compete. Go and help your colleague. Become his friend. Create a symbiotic relationship where you both benefit. Refer patients to him. Help with emergencies. You will both attract different types of patients. Grow dentistry. Grow dental health. Answer No 4: Do what I do. I ignore everybody else. I’m not going to spend my time worrying about other dentists. They can worry about me if they want. |
AuthorThis blog is the fictional story of a dentist. The dentist works with Jessica and Beryl in a town a lot like Hobart. The blog tells the story of what these people get up to and the work that they do. If you feel that you recognize yourself in one of the stories please remember it is fictional and the characters and stories are all fictional. Though all the stories are based on my time as a dentist in Hobart and are based on things which actually did happen. Categories
All
|