Wish List with Elaine Halley

with Elaine Halley

I started my practice in 1995. I was young, crazy and naïve and decided that I had ideas and that the best situation was if I started my own practice so I could do things exactly how I wanted them done.

I definitely have more than a touch of the control freak about me!

At the time of planning where I would open my ‘dream’ practice, I was living in Peterborough and working in East London and I managed to purchase the contents of a dental practice from a retiring dentist in Lewisham.

The x-ray machine and autoclave were only two years old but the chair must have been about 30 years old! It had a stool attached by an arm which swung round the back!

I was so pleased at myself for being thrifty and carted off armfuls of instruments and sundries and arranged transport for the larger items all the way up to my parents home in St Andrews where they were deposited in the garage, it took four men to lift that dental chair!

So finally, when I settled on opening a practice in Perth, had been on a spending spree at Wrights of Dundee to kit it out, added in all my job lot where I could, I had to learn the hard lesson about cashflow management and that actually money does need to balance and like it or not this is a business not a hobby!

Ever since then I have seen various trends and gadgets come and go and like most dentists I have invested in the next best thing time and again. Some of them were and some of them were not!

I have been guilty of the odd dust in the cupboard never-been-used purchase maybe that’s because getting out the instructions and actually reading them just takes too long!

One of the biggest potential costs facing us in dentistry now is the potential investment in digital technology and IT in general. I love the interdisciplinary workflow of Digital Smile Design inspired by Christian Coachman and I have worked hard in our practices to mould our patient journey and experience and diagnostic process around those principles.

So now, when I think about if money was no object what would I buy I was thinking about more chairside digital scanners, a CBCT machine for my second practice.

But actually, if money was really no object I think I would buy about 3 different chairside scanners so that I could maximise the benefits of all of them without the worry about being ‘tied in’ to one set of software, or the spiralling costs of digital hardware licenses, maintenance, upgrades and all the other hidden costs.

I would also have operative microscopes fitted in all treatment rooms, and digital HD video cameras and photo studios around every corner, and big HD flat screen TV’s, and benchtop model printers and…. I could go on.

I would also replicate a lot of what I already have but have it in every treatment room - that’s 10 across two practices!

And I’ve always wanted but never been able to justify one of those all singing all dancing massage chairs for the patient lounge, but actually, several for the patient lounge and also for the staff areas so we could all maximise the benefits of some time out!