Gravity is not the only natural force that can bring you down to earth. The practice of dentistry can also leave you feeling tethered to your work and before you know it, your shoulders become loaded with the yoke of professional demands . We start moving like oxen carrying a heavy burden. This is known as ‘Loading’ (Dyrbye 2017). The rewards can be worthwhile if we take or have the time to appreciate them.
How often do we stop to “smell the roses”?
Although as GDPs we like to get together and moan about general practice, what other career choice could we now make in the context of our subjective and early skill specialisation? We can so easily chase ourselves endlessly, on the ‘hamster wheel’ of the practice appointment book. Before we know it, we will soon be senior (or even more senior) dentists and wonder how on earth we got there.
How are you going to make your life more enjoyable, your practice more successful and your working day safer and more productive?
Any improvement of the level of engagement with our dental team enhances what we do. In this regard, those same teams can help by decreasing our dento-legal risk. This can relieve some of the aversion to risk that can sometimes feel like the “sword of Damocles” hanging over us, ready to strike. Being under constant scrutiny and increasing regulation, an ever present dento-legal risk is part of the ‘loading’ burden that we bear as dentists.
Stress management can go some way to mitigating our own susceptibility to fatigue and burnout (Collin et al 2019). Increasingly, as we interact with peers and patients in a more competitive and web-based world, we need to be thinking in a different way as never before (Bain and Jerome 2017). How about empowering your team? Have you considered how much a motivated team can help you to catch your breath, conserve your energy and improve your working day?
Some strategies are easy to implement and others take a lot of time and effort. I hope to be able to outline some of the ideas that I have come across in my practice and from other practitioners over the past two decades of being a clinical dentist, technician, teacher, mentor and lecturer whilst working in general practice, community dentistry, teaching in academic environments and facilitating dento-legal workshops on behalf of Dental Protection.
So what can we do ?
One of the most effective, free and easy to implement strategies is having regular ‘five minute’ or ‘stand up’ meetings with your team. This helps share the relevant daily information about patients, staffing and any other relevant factors so your team is fully informed to anticipate any changes from the normal daily routine.
This effect can be explained by extrapolating the Yerkes and Dodson (1908) curve that connects performance to emotional arousal (stress). Moving the curve to the right, using simulation and anticipation of different outcomes means that people can perform better under greater levels of stress.
The regular 'brief' meetings you can hold, usually at the beginning of the morning list, are a brief summary of the day ahead, enabling team members to have a clear idea of what will be occurring during the working day ahead including any anticipated potential changes in plan.
Improving the psychosocial safety climate of a dental practice can be looked at in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Bradford 2016). Ideas have been implemented successfully in UK dental practices. I hope that you might like to try thinking outside of the box in your own practice and witness a significant effect.
If you had a choice, would you choose to continue treading water on a slowly rising tide?
Recognise and capitalise on your team’s strengths. Utilise them to enhance how you do what you wish to do. If you do something wrong then change it. If you do something right then do more of it.
Be a true leader and your team will follow, easing your burdensome load on the path to self-actualisation.
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