Early this week, I was sitting at Starbucks; drinking a chai tea, creating my powerpoint
presenation for the CDA meeting on my laptop and texting with my kids on my blackberry, while
listening to music on my Ipod….
Do you remember (not that long ago) that none of those things existed? Remember the days when
you didn’t even have a home computer? Now, most people have more than 1 computer, 3-5 Ipods,
everyone in the house has a cell phone…and once we got these new gadgets our lives were never
the same.
The same thing has happened in Dentistry… we have seen changes that have irreversibly affected
the direction of our profession;
- Better materials (do you look at your patients and say with confidence “We can make that crown
look better”)
- Digital X-Rays (Isn’t it amazing, now we can change the color, change the density, highlight, spotlight)
- Hand Pieces (can you imagine prepping a crown with a belt-driven hand piece?)
- Computers in the Operatory (no more paper charts or paper schedules! In just 5 minutes I can see everything
I need to know about the practice)
What about what has changed specifically for Hygiene?
- Ultrasonic scalers
- Soft Tissue laser therapy
- Chemotherapeutics
- Home case products
- Power toothbrushes
- Sealants
- New research on fluoride
It still makes me laugh, sometimes I go on Dentaltown or other forums, and I hear hygienists bragging about
still doing everything by hand – it makes me laugh, because it’s not the best way anymore. With
the changes in new technology, why wouldn’t you use them?
We have new products to help us help our patients in their fight agains bacterial infections in their mouths…
we have excellent home care products (for some of us, when we started practicing there were little if any
home care products that we could recommend for our patients – not the same anymore!)
We have sealants and fluoride and new research on how we can actually reverse decay. We know have all these
great preventative measures that we can offer our patients – that we didn’t have 20 years ago!
If you really want to change your paradigms and address the new changes and challenges in our profession -
it’s going to take some persistence and time – but I am here to tell you that you can turn around tomorrow
and see things beginning to flow and transform right before your eyes…this is a very exciting time to
be a part of dental hygiene!
Wendy
PS – I have created a system that is so simple – it is the perfect system for any office that has tried
to incorporate all of these changes but can’t seem to increase hygiene production or has hit a plateau…
it’s as simple as 4 easy steps. Check it out at https://www.theteamtraininginstitute.com/hygiene/$1/
Tags: fight agains, Hand, home, paper schedules, soft tissue laser, Wendy PS
Posted in Hygiene Profitability | No Comments »
