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Professional Courtesy: Pain or Progress? by Dr. Thomas Giacobbi

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Professional Courtesy: Pain or Progress?


by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, editorial director

Many dental professionals suffer from aches and pains. For many dentists, it’s some form of intermittent neck, shoulder or back pain. Moving forward, think of this dull ache as job security.

While dental professionals toil away on a micro scale compared with, say, construction workers, we share one thing in common: physical labor. Our profession requires movement to be successful. Lucky for us, these are some movements a computer just can’t do. We bob and weave with a moving object—our patients, who are awake, sometimes uncomfortable and often unpredictable. Technology is getting better at predicting patterns, but human beings are a bottomless supply of randomness.

The current discussion and debate around AI tend to focus on its future impact on jobs. This technology has already started to replace some of the more mundane and repetitive jobs, such as answering phones in call centers and moving inventory in warehouses. In the dental realm, we have leveraged this technology to aid with patient communication, appointment scheduling, lab-fabricated prosthesis design and X-ray review, to name a few.

It’s far too soon to see a major impact on the job market in dentistry because most of these new technologies help people do more work, but the technology has yet to replace the people themselves. Furthermore, the challenges in dental offices around the country may push the development of these technologies to help fill the void in the workforce we have seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.

My message this month is not intended to be doom and gloom, but rather a new perspective on today’s rapidly developing technologies. The evolution of technology in industries like dentistry is incremental. As newer technology develops, it’s often easier to adopt and adapt if you have experience with the technology that preceded it. For example, dental offices went from paper to electronic appointment books with practice management systems. Then digital charts replaced paper folders. In the 1980s, digital X-rays were integrated into digital charts; today, artificial intelligence-based technology can read the X-rays, highlight suspicious areas for review, measure bone loss and more.

If you were still using a paper appointment book and chart, adding AI technology for reading X-rays wouldn’t be your first investment in technology; it would make more sense to understand digital charts and digital X-rays first.

There’s so much technology available to us in dentistry that it’s often difficult to know where to start. Tackle something appropriate to your situation every year or two. As 2023 ends and you begin setting your goals for 2024, select a technology that will improve your practice and enjoyment of dentistry. You might be ready to finally start capturing digital impressions. Perhaps you want to drop stone models and start using a 3D printer. Or maybe you’re ready to add implant placement to your practice and plan those cases digitally. If you add technology over time, you’ll have time to absorb the new workflow and be better equipped for the next iteration of progress—which always comes sooner than one thinks.

The right technology to adopt may look different to every practice, but the bottom line is the same: You must incorporate new technology in your practice on a regular basis or you could be in a world of hurt.


Do you have plans to add something new in 2024?
Please share it in the comments under this article below! You can reach me via email at tom@dentaltown.com.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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