Some dentists really can’t help themselves.
Really. You can’t make this stuff up…
I recently heard about a dentist who was having a disagreement with his team regarding continuing education for team members.
The question arose because the dentist was having some of his team members doing dental courses and modules on their own time, and he was wondering whether or not the team members should be reimbursed for their time spent learning.
It’s a good question, especially in the case when the dentist and the practice have asked the team members to participate in this type of learning.
And sure, the staff benefit from the added knowledge they acquire, and they can take that knowledge and those skills away with them if and whenever they decide to move on…. But, and it is a big BUT, so too does the dental office and the practice owner benefit from the skills developed by those team members.
I guess in the mind of the dentist, the thought of non-payment of staff for their time spent studying, comes from the fact that as a business owner themselves, they are never paid for their actual time spent in attending courses and learning.
And as you would expect, doing that additional learning usually takes the business owner away from doing the things that they normally are doing in their business… those things that make money for them and for the business.
So, in reality, there really are a couple of logical arguments for and against when you discuss this topic. Sadly though, logic can’t be used to match reason and emotion.
Here’s why….
As a business owner, why would you really expect your staff to study in their own time for nothing, while you and your business will benefit from those staff having increased their knowledge?
My personal belief is that the business owner should be paying EACH of their staff whenever any of them go beyond their regular hours in the name of improvement that the business owner and their business are actually going to be benefitting from.
In the instance that I just mentioned, a dentist and his employed hygienist had come to a misunderstanding about payment to the hygienist for hours spent studying after hours on her own time, doing courses and modules provided for and paid for by the dentist.
Sadly, because of this Mexican Standoff and misunderstanding between the two, it is my opinion that this relationship between the dentist and this particular hygienist will never be mended.
The dentist has indelibly scarred his meanness upon the hygienist…
And it is absolutely stupid and unreasonable.
Here’s why…
Ask yourself this:
How many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of co-diagnosed treatment do you think that hygienist is now not going to bother to present to the dentist during patient examinations, because she perceives her dentist as being a tight and mean old man?
As if the dentist’s actions in this instance are not enough, how do you think the hygienist feels seeing her dentist cruising around in his European sports car, living it up in his high-class super mansion and jetting off to some tropical oasis with his nuclear family, while he expects the hygienist to be putting in the study yards back home on her own time?
“What gets rewarded gets repeated and gets improved upon”.
Here’s my tip Mr. Dentist:
Pay them to study, and reward them for doing so.
You will make that investment back in spades….
This is really a common-sense discussion that should never have even made it out of that particular dental office.
I’m wondering what the super hygiene coach who sold off this programme to this doc told him to do about reimbursing the hygienist for her time in this situation?
I know what any decent coach would have told this guy, but then again, common sense sometimes isn’t really all that common…
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