Approach dentistry as a game with prevention and self-care built in for you, the clinician. We play offense and defense in our lives, so learn how to build a strategy that works with patient care.
There are many sports in life. If we looked at life as if we were playing a game, we might have more fun. Looking at the dental field as a sport helped me to try strategies and perspectives that helped me remain in dentistry and stay away from burnout. Also, I was way too serious all the time. Probably from the pressure of the high expectations of my Perfection, People Pleasing, Inner Critic, Over-Empathetic Fear Gears keeping me in a highly anxious and fearful state. I had to find a way to not be so serious. Hence, thinking of dentistry and even self-care as a game can help us notice an improvement in our quality of life.
If we are going to show up to live life and play any games, we might as well enjoy it instead of being stressed through it. To get better at a game, we have to improve our fundamentals. This entails our personal Internal Foundation of our Mindset (Developmental Mindset), Perspectives (Drive Gears instead of Fear Gears), Thoughts/Beliefs/Memories (The Motivation Station and Rumination Station), and our Constructive and Destructive Emotions and Actions. We can use self-care strategies to shift to a Developmental Mindset, using the Drive Gears and visiting the Motivation Station as often as possible to improve our quality of life and enable us to live up to our full potential.
The Internal Foundation work helps us to have a better understanding of how we treat ourselves in stressful situations and what we can improve to help change how we view ourselves in those situations. It will be easier to establish healthy boundaries for ourselves so we can help our patients without sacrificing our needs. Instead of only being able to react to the curveballs life throws at us, we have strategies we can utilize to keep ourselves from going back to our old habits that lead to burnout. An example of this would be the way our training kicks in during an emergency instead of reacting from our raw emotions. We can pause and take a moment to choose to react more appropriately to help us for the long-term instead of just applying a short-term band-aid.
A good example of training in action would be the Healthcare Provider First-Aid and CPR training renewal that happens yearly or every two years, depending on the organization. Staying calm and performing CPR, instead of running around like a chicken with our head cut-off, is an example of good training kicking in. Reviewing this regularly and staying on top of any recent changes helps ensure we will know what to do at a moment’s notice in an emergency. It is good to have emotions, but acting on our raw emotions might not always be the right choice of action.
We also need to practice self-care every day so it becomes our new normal and second nature to implement. Preventing burnout helps our overall health. Practicing good prevention for ourselves helps us to help those around us even more.
Prevention is the opportunity for a patient to change their future and a chance for them to grow. For dental professionals, prevention is our opportunity to promote healthy self-esteem, safe work practices, and connect with our patients without attaching to their traumas. Prevention takes the fear and pain out of dentistry for patients. Prevention takes the anxiety out of our caring. Self-care is prevention!
The Game of Preventive Dentistry
Because we are both the coach and player in life, we need to review our Foundation, such as our mindset, perspective, thoughts, and beliefs. These influence our offense and defense that are expressed through our actions and emotions and improve the surrounding environment.
Looking at our career as a sport, we need strategies to help keep us playing for more than one game (one workday) and one season (one work year). In the past, I have taken life way too seriously and missed out on some great fun and excellent lessons along the way. Looking at obstacles as a game seems less intimidating, as we work away from a Conditional Mindset. If thinking of life as a game is too corny for you, I am sorry. Most of the time, the largest source of intimidation comes from us and the anxiety we develop from stressful situations. With a game, we practice tactics and strategies so we can continue to play. Serious mental work is very important. When using it correctly, we can have a fresh perspective on how we feel about being a dental professional and feeling great about how we help people, all while ensuring our own best health along the way.
Maintaining healthy boundaries and expectations for ourselves in caring for people is essential to lowering our risk of burnout when helping people who don’t enjoy coming to the dentist and are afraid. We must think about our Offense and Defense Strategies constantly to stay in a healthy mindset and have a lasting career taking care of others.
The name of the game is Preventive Dentistry. The dental professionals are a team playing for the patients of your practice. Notice I said playing for the patients in your practice, not playing against. In this game, the goal is for both the patient and the dental professional to win. That’s right, both sides need to win for a point to be scored. The dental practice always has the home advantage at the dental office.
Fouls are anything that takes us away from scoring points for patients. These can take the form of either foul moods or foul plays. Fouls take away from the values of the practice and goals. These include negative comments, anything that takes away from the overall vision of the dental team, lacking support in certain areas of patient care or scheduling, and drama in the office (co-workers not getting along or gossiping). Fouls are not the same as making mistakes. Mistakes help us learn and show us where we need improvement as we develop.
Points are scored when everyone benefits from an exchange of dental-related services. Points are any win with a patient improving their own daily oral self-care routine, committing to and following through with their treatment, a patient completing all their treatment, paying for all their treatment, overcoming their dental fears, or a patient writing a review or referring someone to the office. Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting literally keeping track of points. The actual numbers from your production will help you keep your score and other related stats. Your stats are what everyone is working to improve so the dental practice can keep doing what it does best-helping people.
The dental team has different positions, such as the dentist, dental assistants, dental hygienists, and administrative staff. Each position fills many needs for your patients and all positions must work together to create a win for each side.
Dental procedures are the plays we perform for patients. This falls under the Offense category. The Offense category encompasses the ways that we help play to win as we care for patients. It is proactive, not aggressive, and is ideal treatment carried out ideally for both parties. The Offense category is for all the ways to help get patients to ideal treatment, keep everyone safe, and create a wonderful experience at the dental practice for both sides. Another way of saying this is offense is moving productively towards practice goals.
Defense is defending our core values and countering anything that could take us away from serving our patients in the best way possible. Defense strategies may be needed at any time to take control of the dental appointment and to minimize negative experiences for both parties. A great defense strategy helps instill our own healthy boundaries and get us back to offense so we can keep doing what we do best. Another way of saying this is Defense is guarding or protecting ourselves and practicing goals proactively. We need to implement both Offense and Defense strategies as a part of our self-care plan to keep playing.
Since we are all in the process of development and need to continually practice staying on our “A-game”, each individual player needs different self-care strategies to help keep their fundamentals fresh. Implementing daily self-care, both physically and mentally, can help keep us feeling passionate about our career and helping people, all while staying far away from burnout. That is why in many sports there is always some kind of rest period, a time to reset mentally and rest physically.
In my book,
Scaling Burnout: Navigate the Emotional Side of Dentistry and Prevent Burnout, I break down the fundamentals for clinicians, and the fundamentals for working with patients. Fundamentals are divided into Offense and Defense as a playbook of sorts. These are the tactics we can use to help practice good self-care and also work through stress-inducing scenarios to overcome them.