“I don’t need an associate dentist in my clinic” TIME TO RETHINK

“I have a single chaired practice. What would the associate dentist do in my clinic?”
“I have a two chaired practice and my second chair is hardly used. I don’t think associate dentist fits in my clinical setup”
“My patients won’t allow anyone else to treat them. Associate dentist will be a wasteful investment.”

The above quotes are the commonly phrased sentences which we hear when the need of associate dentist in a clinic is discussed.
The larger centers of course have one or more associate dentists.

The dentists who have employed associate dentists for more than a year have this sort of a saying.
“Associate dentist is a magic wand. It improved my positioning in clinic and my success rate went up by 20%”
” Hiring an associate was a wonderful employment as it gave me an ample time to get out of the routine dentistry and think out of the box”
“Dental Associate made my life easier, my family happier and gave me the freedom to flourish and enjoy”

Can you see the contrasting difference between the two opinions?
None of the opinion is wrong. The difference is in understanding the difference between the working of the two clinics.
The people against associate dentists have either never tried or failed working with associate dentist.
The people in favor did anticipate the application of associate dentist, hired the right people and executed their job descriptions perfectly.

An associate dentist can be told to shoulder the following responsibilities in a clinic with low turn out of patients.

1. Triage call manager – Addressing concerns for online queries

2. Initial Assessment Manager – Does the initial assessment and charting of the patient

3. Documentation manager – Creates and complies the medical history, consents, post operative instructions, photography, lab records and treatment history in software or manual.

4. Perio Manager – Assigned the job of carving out the mostly ignored perio cases especially missed scalings to provide work and increase clinical revenue

5. Social Media Manager – Create interesting content and share in groups but basic training is a must to filter content.

6. Charity Manager – Perform treatments for underprivileged people on a consistent basis.

7. Staff manager – Supervises the staff in  day to day work and conduct

8. Monthly Campaign Manager– Has to run a monthly campaign with the provided format of planning, marketing and execution.

9. Consistency Manager – List down the things that are not happening consistently in clinic and hand over to her for the audit of those works.

10. Feedback Manager– Takes text, audio, video testimonials with proper training and takes google reviews as well.

11. Relationship manager – Sent out for outdoor camping with team and marketing material e.g. schools, senior citizen clubs etc.

12. Positioning manager – The most important part which makes you position yourselves up in your own practice as well as in the community which increases the case acceptance rate.

So what are you waiting for. Go and get your clinic an associate dentist who could fulfill those small gaps which you could never fulfill till now.
Every head counts in team. Creating team is the only way to fulfill your dreams..