Ignite Your Practice!

The Dentist’s Network

12/20/2011

Ignite Your Practice!
By Dr. Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD

The happiest and most successful dentists that I know are those who love what they do. I speak to thousands of dentists every year, so I have a real sense of what “type” of dentists are going to be successful. I have always observed that happy and successful nearly always go together hand in hand. Here, though, is an interesting observation that I am not sure many have made before – the most fulfilled dentists that I see are those that take hands-on and live patient courses. Let’s take a look at some of the educational opportunities in dentistry and what I look for in my own practice when choosing dental continuing education.

Webinars
Webinars are a short-term tool to get some concepts quickly and easily in the comfort of your office or home. They are sometimes moderately useful, but can also be a huge waste of your time. The good thing about a webinar is that if you see it is a waste of time, you can just turn it off and do something else.

Lectures
Lecture courses tend to be longer and you have to be physically present to take advantage of them.  Choose your lecture courses wisely. What I always look for is topics that I am interested in, topics I may not know much about, and topics that have direct practical application. Personally, I want a lecture course that covers a number of topics relating to the clinical and practice management sides of my office that I can take back to my office and institute right away. Lecture courses are limited in the fact that you are only hearing the concepts being taught without actually being able to physically experience the techniques right in front of you. I always choose lecture courses that are applicable to the entire dental team, and I highly recommend that you bring your dental team with you as often as possible. Too many times, a dentist will get excited about a concept or a technique and go back to the office where the team will not share that same enthusiasm.  A great idea or new concept will just die an unnatural death and never be integrated into your practice, because the team has not heard the same thing the dentist has heard.

Hands-On Courses
Especially for dentists, there is nothing that can take the place of a hands-on course where you can physically touch, practice and experience new techniques and concepts in dentistry. The way you became a dentist was through hands-on experience. Had it been only lecture for four years of dental school, you would not have known how to place a restoration! There is an abundance of new technology, products, and materials in dentistry today. You can talk about them endlessly, but never really understand the concept of how they will directly benefit your patients until you have it in your hands and see how it performs. Hands-on courses are absolutely the best way to kick the tires of new products and new technologies so that when you do integrate these into your practice, your learning curve will be greatly reduced or completely eliminated.

Live Patient Hands-On Training
This is the absolute best learning experience possible for dentists and dental teams, especially when you are introducing something brand new into your practice such as dental implants or Botox® and dermal fillers. Mentored one-on-one live person hands-on training is mandatory in order to gain the proper education, training and experience. There is nothing better than having a clinician looking over your shoulder and helping you eliminate mistakes and achieve excellent patient outcomes with whatever you are trying to learn. The downside is that many times you have to travel extensively to get this training. For this reason, the American Academy of Facial Esthetics innovation of bringing live patient hands-on courses locally all over North America eliminates this travel cost, making our Botox® and dermal filler training easily accessible to dentists everywhere.

As a practicing dentist and teaching clinician for the past 30 years, I love what I do both in the office and when I am teaching dentists. I try hard to make sure that my lectures are as current and interesting as possible and very practical so that you can understand the new concepts in dentistry. I really love teaching hands-on courses because they allow dentists to truly understand and integrate the concepts into their practice literally the next day. The feeling that I have changed a dentist’s life by improving their efficiency, lowering their overhead, and showing them how to have some fun in dentistry translates to a wonderful feeling of knowing that patient’s lives will also be affected with more successful treatment outcomes.

Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD is a practicing general dentist and an internationally known lecturer, author, and dental consultant. An evaluator emeritus for Clinicians Reports, Dr. Malcmacher is president of the American Academy of Facial Esthetics.

Interested in knowing more about how to truly enjoy dentistry? Click here.

Interested in having Dr. Malcmacher speak to your dental society or study club? Click here. To reach Dr. Malcmacher, email him at DrMalcmacher@thedentistsnetwork.net or call 1.800.952.0521.