Enjoy The Ride (eBook)

Lessons For The Quest To Live A Joyful, Profitable Life In Dentistry

Alan Stern (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Indie Books International (Verlag)
978-1-947480-91-9 (ISBN)

Are you one of the many dentists that have become bored or burned out after a number of years doing the same thing? Or maybe you are a new dentist feeling overwhelmed with this new path. Dr. Alan Stern's mission is to help dentists keep the passion that drove them to pursue a career in this great and important profession alive. Enjoy The Ride is full of stories and practical advice for creating a successful practice and happy personal life based on Dr. Stern's life and four decade long career. Find your why again and let dentistry help you express your special gifts to the world.

Lesson 1

A Life In Dentistry Is Challenging

“Dental school is a launchpad for divorce.”

That was the first thing I remember hearing from one of our deans at Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry. What an incredibly demoralizing thing to say to a group of people aspiring to be healers.

But the dean was correct, to a degree. A fair number of our married classmates entering dental school in that summer of 1977 did wind up divorcing. Having been married a week and a day before hearing those words, I was scared. Forty-plus years later, I feel blessed.

The dental school was primarily interested in creating oral repair people with disregard to anything else.

So, the stress of the dental school curriculum took its toll. Perhaps the stress accelerated the inevitable on young couples who couldn’t get through it “for better or for worse.” Or perhaps a little bit of preparation or counseling might have helped. We’ll never know.

Back in the seventies and earlier, no school saw its responsibility to anything other than academics, which was the norm for that era. But if our education blinded us to the human reality of being a student, how could we have been expected to see the human side of the people we would treat or the human side of what it’s like to practice as a forever imperfect dentist and human being? The simple truth is that it couldn’t. The simple truth is that the actual dentistry is merely a part of what we do; in fact, it is the end product of a long process that must begin with some level of connection.

So many things have to happen before we do that technical stuff school taught us. And it is these things which really affect our lives and enable us to powerfully affect others.

What we do is special. Rachel Remen, in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, teaches that many of us live far more meaningful lives than we know. This is so true for anyone practicing dentistry. What impact does your work have on the day-to-day life of each soul you encounter? From the rehabilitation of a diseased mouth to (what we see as) a simple direct restoration, you have altered the quality—and sometimes the quantity—of a person’s life.

Whether you provide elective or essential services, you can create sacred moments and affect someone for the better every day; and, in doing so, reinforce the very special nature of your unique brand to yourself and everyone you encounter.

Dentists Do Sacred Work

Let’s start by taking a look at the human side of dentistry, which is where the real power of what you do every day resides.

First, let’s look at how you can use your power for the benefit of others. Let’s start with a story.

I practice in a condominium complex with nine other medical and dental offices in three separate buildings. One Christmas morning, I ran into my neighbor, Harvey (author’s note: when just first names are used in this book, the story is true but the name is changed to protect privacy), an obstetrician-gynecologist. We greeted each other and I asked Harvey what he was doing for the holiday. He shrugged and grimaced and said that he was on call and he was going to the hospital for the next twenty-four hours. My response to him was that he was forced into a position of generosity and privilege for which so few are qualified and for which many people would be grateful.

“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess,” he responded.

We parted with my hope that he’d share/experience the joy of delivering Christmas babies to some very thankful parents.

I am privileged to have known a lot of school teachers. Teaching is an amazing profession and teachers occupy a critical position of influence for everyone they encounter. For example, can you remember who won an Oscar or the American League MVP the year you were in first grade? I certainly can’t, but I bet you can remember who your first grade teacher was. School teachers are special; their ability to change lives is every bit as powerful as that of dentists. But they are accountable to bureaucracies that are stifling. They teach to test. They’re evaluated not on their performance, not on their care, not on their love for children; rather, they are evaluated on students’ test scores and are severely restricted in their use of judgment, something which experience brings to them.

Can you imagine being evaluated by a faceless bureaucrat for the outcomes of your work on people who eat tons of sugar and don’t brush or floss their teeth? We have a fantastic profession where we are still able to exercise our five greatest talents—care, skill, judgment, leadership, and influence for the good of others. And although some practices are subject to the whim of insurance companies and other third-party payers, most, if not all, of us can practice with little or no micromanagement to cause us to burn out. We merely have to look up from that crown, filling, impression, or extraction site and see the real value of what we can do every day.

I will never forget Mildred, a lady in her upper seventies who suffered from MS and could not walk. Mildred asked me to correct her severely deformed, discolored, and mottled anterior teeth. The work was very difficult for numerous relatively unimportant reasons. Our entire team put countless hours improving her home care, preparing her soft tissues, and preparing and provisionalizing her teeth, making her as comfortable as possible in our chair.

When the time came to deliver her ceramic crowns, Mildred took one look in the mirror and asked us to bring her husband into the treatment room. “Paul,” Mildred asked, “can you take me driving around town so I can just smile at people?”

There was not a dry eye in the office that day. Our hygienist, our assistant, and our front desk person (who is also my wife) all joined Mildred and Paul in the treatment room to congratulate her. How much impact do you think our crown-and-bridge had on the lady who couldn’t walk, but whose self-esteem and self-efficacy were renewed by what we dentists see as just another procedure?

I had a young man come up to me recently to thank me for talking to him about stopping tobacco chewing. I may very well have saved his life with a few well-spoken and well-timed words. If that wasn’t a sacred moment worth living for, I don’t know what was.

How many times a day do these sacred moments occur in your life? How have you used your power as the person called Doctor to influence someone? Have you greeted the UPS guy, the FedEx lady, the letter carrier, or the custodian by their names and with a smile? Do you and your team even know their names? Have you complimented, educated, trained, or thanked your team? In an era where criticism flows so quickly and fiercely and when mistakes are seriously consequential, an enthusiastic and sincere acknowledgment of your team’s successes is so valuable. They’ll love you for it and will be motivated to continue to improve. Every one of these simple actions provides your own unique support to another person.

So, stop for a moment, look up from that composite, extraction site, and set of veneers and smell the roses of the greatness of your wonderful, albeit imperfect work.

Keep the passion that drove you to pursue a career in this great profession alive by savoring the power of your position that you use for the betterment of others every single day. Most importantly, try to begin your day (and ask your team to begin their day) by asking yourself, “Whose life/lives will I make better today?” and end the day by answering that very question.

If You’re Not Excited, Get Excited.

Many dentists I know have become bored or burned out after doing the same thing for many years. The reality, however, is that we can learn new things and offer new services at any time in our careers. Innovations in implant prosthetics, airway management, Invisalign, and the oral-systemic connection are exciting. You don’t have to keep doing the same old, same old. Get out of your comfort zone, take some good courses, latch on to something new, get excited, and project that excitement in your office.

Fall In Love Again

After forty-six years of knowing one another, my wife’s and my love is as strong as ever. But our love today is very different from what it was in decades past; it has to be because neither one of us is the same as we were in our late teens and twenties when we met. The years of excitement, discovery, heavy passion, and carefree fun have given way to newer ways of loving one another and enjoying the life we’ve built. The same transition of love applies to our relationship with our children as they have grown from total dependency into independent, unique people with terrific careers and very nice lives of their own.

You can maintain a loving relationship with your career in dentistry in much the same way. In addition to learning new things, you can recognize the significance of your work to others. You can work to develop your team’s level of skill and knowledge. You can get out into the community as a resource for wellness. Use your knowledge and experience in new and creative ways. Light a spark inside of yourself. Remember the reason that you chose dentistry as a career. Find your why and let dentistry help you express your...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	26.12.2019
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Zahnmedizin
ISBN-10	1-947480-91-X / 194748091X
ISBN-13	978-1-947480-91-9 / 9781947480919

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