A compleate clinician
The pursuit of becoming a compleate clinician
You might have heard the term compleate clinician. No it is spelled correctly! Keep reading and you will find out.
The 2023-2024 focus of our study club (SDDH) is all topics around becoming a complete clinician. I heard this term for the first time when I was planning to start a study club two years ago. Michael Cohen described a complete clinician as one who integrate well-being and oral health with clinical techniques of dentistry. In the 2012 SSC symposium, he referred to the origin of the term compleate to the work of Izaak Walton (the compleate angler) in 1653.
I’d like to delve deeper on how to become a complete clinician.
This is important since I believe maintaining a balance of joyful life and fulfilling practice of dentistry needs more than the technical skills of dentistry.
Dental providers often stuck in the mundane of running a practice and forget to take a pause and look at the big picture.
Who is a complete clinician?
A complete clinician offers comprehensive dental care rendered in an efficiently run dental practice driven by patients dental needs and life style. She is not hung up on extraction vs non-extraction, implant vs natural teeth, or airway dentistry hype. Every day of her practice is intentional balancing patient care and distancing from a mundane 9-5 dental services.
Offering comprehensive dentistry
Most dentists were trained to provide comprehensive care - at least dental school strives to offer this. Clinicians decision to steer away from comprehensive care is often associated with patient’s low acceptance of comprehensive dentistry. Accepting a $10K treatment which barely covered by insurance is not a given for most patients. Building a practice around comprehensive care is a long term game - over five years.
Patients expectations have changed. Millennial or Gen Z won’t quickly settle on recommended procedures. They have no loyalty. I believe offering comprehensive care combined with the exceptional patient experience, you will thrive in a competitive market. It is easy to treat 3 MOD restorative - two of them you could have watched - and ignore offering a plan to replace a missing tooth with an implant-supported restorative.
I have seen well-oiled practices offering a mediocre dental treatments and oversell unnecessary procedures yet the patients are loyal to them. This tell me patients want high quality dental care. I believe you can find the right patient for your practice if you build the right system.
Focusing on running an efficient business
I recently read the E-myth revisited by Michael Gerber. In his book, he walks you through multiple stages of maturity for a small business. My favorite chapter is working on your business, not in it. He explains how one should separate the technical work from the operational system of a small business.
Providing comprehensive dentistry and being a complete clinician requires a complete clinician operating system: starting from patient first visit to presenting a comprehensive plan, and executing the plan overtime based on patients priorities and financial interests.
It is easy to get trapped in single tooth dentistry and cleaning teeth. It often doesn’t need a well-polished system. It is easy to use $3000 Invisalign treatment for a trap to get the patient in your practice. Offer an average or poor aligner treatment and generate revenue from 3-4 questionable crowns under the umbrella of cosmetic dentistry.
Living a fulfilling life
When only you are equipped with knowledge of comprehensive dentistry and you built an operating system providing comprehensive care, then dental insurance companies would have a limited impact on your practice and you will be off the rat race. It is not easy but doable and it takes time.
Intentional management of your time only happens when you don’t have to put off fires in your clinic all the time. Patient dictating the treatment and mostly driven by cost bring chaos. You can’t build efficient systems in chaos.
In sum, my definition of a compete clinician is more than a dental provider integrating well-being and health to your treatment planning.
A compete clinician is a master of these three: (i) offering comprehensive care; (ii) building a well-oiled operating system to offer comprehensive care; and (iii) being intentional about your work-life balance.
Action steps
Reverse engineer your practice philosophy now. Create goals and objectives in all the three domains of a complete clinician. Start offering comprehensive dentistry to your new patients. Listen to their needs and break down the treatment into phases. Comprehensive approach shouldn’t be rushed.
