Doctors are being solicited on almost a daily basis with opportunities to take a wide variety of continuing education (CE) courses. They are available for everyone at nearly any level of experience, and the sponsoring organizations are as numerous as their reasons and motivations behind presenting the events. So many choices are available that deciding on the best courses to take can become a daunting task.
Hopefully, most of us take courses to fulfill our desire to improve and because we want to stay abreast of the latest techniques or technology while striving to do what is best for our patients. Others may attend merely to meet the minimum requirements of their state board and maintain their license. Whatever the reasons are for attending or for organizational sponsorship, CE will always play a vital role in developing our professional abilities and lives.
A large part of the time in our practices is spent performing implant services and fixed or removable prosthodontic services that require a laboratory component for treatment planning and fabrication. When making our choices and prioritizing what kind of CE we should take and when, we need to consider what might be helpful to our doctor-technician team. I have always asked in my lectures,
Figure 1. Dr. Brian Klym discusses a case face-to-face with one of his dental technicians, Amy Dorman, in Traverse City, Mich.
“Do you really know what to give to your dental technicians in order to get back what you are expecting?” It is a question with a myriad of ramifications (Figure 1).
Despite some positive signs of a growing awareness, I have noticed that very few CE events fully integrate the technical, relationship-based, and interbusiness perspectives of our dental technicians into their curriculum. Our dental technicians are still few and far between at most local, state, and national dental meetings. Most notably, though, the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, the Arizona Dental Association, and the Chicago Dental Society are examples of organizations that have been bringing doctors, staff, and their dental technicians together at meetings to emphasize the importance of the total team concept in achieving optimal results. (There may be others not mentioned here. If so, then they should also be applauded for their efforts in this direction.)
To make a difference in how well we work together as doctor-technician teams, it would be beneficial to see how our dental technicians feel about the CE courses being offered to doctors and their staff. Specifically, and most importantly, how effective is the current curriculum and its impact on our interdependent work?
In order to begin to explore this topic, this article will present feedback from a number of experienced dental laboratory owners and also from the co-executive director of the National Association of Dental Laboratories (NADL). All of these dedicated individuals volunteered to answer questions candidly related to our CE and to offer their opinions on how effective it has been. I believe that their opinions, based on their own valuable experiences, speak for themselves and will give us food for thought the next time we are faced with choosing, designing, or sponsoring CE courses. The first question was posed to all participants, and a compiled list follows. The answers that were repeated most often appear at the top of the list.
In your everyday work experiences with doctors, what would you consider to be the top issues that need to be addressed to obtain the best results possible from your technicians?
quality and consistency of impressions
prep design and technique
more detailed prescriptions that are filled out completely (including future plans for the patient)
improved communication (more detail) when writing shade prescriptions
improved doctor-technician communication (ie, the desired result, feedback, returning calls promptly) and stronger professional relationships (more joint CE experiences)
improvement in the ability to take proper bite registrations
sharing more photos and preoperative study models
a working knowledge of the dental material choices and how to handle them post-fabrication (cementation, bonding, occlusal adjustment, polishing, etc)
understanding the effects of underlying tooth structure, restorative materials, and cements on all-ceramic shades
proper case protocol with checklists for case requirements (ie, a checklist
for dentures reminding the doctor to send in trimmed bite rims with the midline marked)
better knowledge of laboratory procedures for new
dental graduates and younger dentists
specific help in how to implement more self-evaluation of work submitted to the lab prior to sending it in (detailed inspections of preps and impressions).
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