8 Tips to Rekindle Your Relationship with Dentistry by Michael A. Gow, Editor, DentaltownUK magazine

See transcript of the interview

Listen to the interview.

Andrew Wallace recently interviewed Paul McLornan for DentaltownUK. Paul talks about how he ended up moving from Belfast to San Antonio, his Prosthodontic residency and his work and thoughts about ‘Sleep Dentistry’.

About three quarters of the way through the 26 minute interview, in the middle of giving advice to young dentists, he says four words which caught me off guard. ‘I still love dentistry’. I actually scrolled the audio back to listen again. ‘I still love dentistry’.

It caught me off guard as it suddenly made me think for a moment about how I used to say those words, but hadn’t for a while. While there are a lot of reasons why many dentists aren’t happy with dentistry right now, one of my worries for us as a profession is the amount of negativity and stress that seems to be in the relationships that we all have with our profession.

I wrote about this recently and make no apologies for touching on the same subject in this article. It is such an important topic in UK dentistry today. For many of you, your relationship is rock solid, but please do read on — you can never be complacent in your relationships! I do think a lot of dentists have ‘fallen out of love’ with dentistry, but are still in a ‘non loving’ relationship.

As Niall Campbell mentioned in his article, if anyone has the moment of clarity that they know the relationship is over - they need to plan an exit strategy. Read Niall’s articles!

If they haven’t then it is about working out how to rekindle the passion of the ‘relationship’. There are some simple things that you can do straight away to help any relationship get back on track, and these can be adapted to dentistry and summarised in 8 quick tips!

1. FOCUS ON THE POSITIVES
Do more of the types of dentistry you enjoy, and refer the types you don’t.

2. TALK AND LISTEN
Ensure you have good support from staff and management and good working relationships. Talk with them about what you need to be happier at work and ask about what you can do to make things easier.

3. MAKE CHANGES
Make any changes you need to make to ensure you have a good working environment with the correct equipment to do your job well, and enough time to do it in.

4. YOUR NEEDS
Work out how you can be paid the right amount to cover the bills etc but have enough left over to enjoy life.

5. RESPECT
Feel valued by your patients and staff and make sure they know you value them.

6. HISTORY
Remind yourself of all the reasons why you wanted to become a dentist in the first place. Make a list.

7. RECONNECT
Reconnect with dentistry. There are many awesome ways to do this. Train in something new- there are hundreds of workshops and short courses with a myriad of topics.

Go to a conference or trade show if you haven’t for a while. It may be too late now to go to the BDIA, but take a look at the programme for the BACD, or consider going to next year’s newly amalgamated ‘British Dental Conference and Dentistry Show’ (https://bda.org/conference).

You may choose to join www.dentaltown.com to gain free access to the message boards and hundreds of podcasts and online Continuing Education courses. www.dentaltown.com

8. SAY ‘I STILL LOVE YOU’
By saying something out loud you reaffirm it to yourself, and it is easier to feel it. You may be surprised by how powerful it feels to actually say these words out loud. Repeat after me: ‘I still love dentistry’.

There’s always room for improvement, so, last month I asked you all to head over and take part in our DentaltownUK survey. This survey will help us to tailor our magazine perfectly for you. The survey is still running so I’d like to ask those of you who maybe missed it or haven’t taken part yet to take two minutes out of your day and let us know what you think!