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Like every morning I check my Facebook page. Immediately is popping up the advertisement of a master class in dentistry. Like every day. Courses to learn how to do fillings, dentures, dental implants, Microscopy master classes, photography courses, management courses, courses of periodontal surgery and so on. It ‘s a global phenomenon. Only in dentistry.
It does not exist for other branches of medicine.
Dentists seem to be the “ideal target” of the post-graduate Education-Marketing.
But what means to be a DENTIST?
Dentistry is a very difficult job. Kings and Emperors were competing for the best dentists. Dentists were hiding and handing over their secrets from father to son. An ars made of dexterity. The learning and fine-tuning of a manual skill. Like in the movie “The Last Samurai”: the obsessive pursuing of perfection of a gesture.
The Dentist is a health profi dealing with teeth. Actually a little field. Deceptively simple. Mostly very complex, because is branching to many different disciplines. It depends on how the professional is working it out. General practice can be highly repetitive. Getting your mind to sleep. Becoming extremely frustrating and stressful. It is no coincidence that among dentists there is the highest rate of suicides, depressed, anxious, and finally killed because of stroke or heart attack.
The marketing gurus know that. They know which spot to hit to induce dentists to buy: the emotional impairment resulting from a stressful, lonely life.
“Do you feel frustrated and lacking on self-esteem?” You subscribe to a NEW masterclass-event and refine your skill!
“Do you feel lonely in your little office? No one recognizes you?” Post your work on our Facebook Groupe and we promise you many likes and visibility. Just like a Writer who paints his name on every street ampel to tell the world “Hey, I am here!”.
“We will make you feel part of a community!” No marketing, just for pleasure. But is not true:
- the first law of internet is “Create a COMMUNITY”,
- the second law “create a NEED”,
- the third law “fullfill the NEED with something you can buy!”.
But why only in dentistry?
There are many reasons for so much frustration.
1 – the dental profession has been linked for centuries to the Barbershop where you could get your haircut and your tooth pulled out at the same time. A certain type of low-level dentistry, such as the illegal practitioners, is feeding the Donkey-Porsche-Sailing stereotype in the minds of our patients. A neuro-surgeon or a general surgeon enjoys greater consideration.
2 – The DUO teeth-money. In Dentistry is running a lot of money.
The more fillings you do, the more money you make. Teeth are 32. Multiplied by multiples of 10 you get large numbers. This attracts the bad feelings of patients. They do not understand the complexity of your work. They are more aggressive. They sue you easily, exacerbated by the economic crisis and pursued by famished lawyers.
3 – It ‘s a profession that deals with teeth, but requires the integration of different knowledges, like medicine, surgery, dentistry, dental technician’s knowledge, business skills, psychology and office management know-how. We are talking about SEVEN different professional fields. Not to mention the computerization. Nowadays, if you can not use a computer, surf the web with Google, use socials (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Skype, Google+), you are not going anywhere!
The dentist’s being BUSY is spreading in a 360° way around, at least 12-14 hours a day, seven on seven, 365 days a year and learning to master at least two disciplines of your job above average.
Dentistry is an area of expertise where it is extremely difficult to be competitive.
Patients are hungry for EXCELLENCE. No longer accept average results. Dentists are in extreme difficulty. They are depressed and anxious and the market is taking advantage of it. FEAR is draining their energy out.
Desperately seeking for a solution through the training courses. That seldom works. THAT’S WHY they are NOT any more showing up in congresses and courses.
Let’s see why.
The theory of the 10,000 hours.
The theory about the acquisition of an EXPERTISE was conceived in 1993 by an American psychologist K. Anders Ericsson1. His researches led him to the conclusion that one of the key elements of expertise, relays in the number of total hours devoted to it: 10.000.
In addition to those, another three key-elements are needed: the natural talent (the gift), the quality of the exercise (the focus), the circumstances (the environment).
The Gift
About the talent is very little to say. We are NOT everybody Mozart, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci or Maradona. You have it or you don’t. If not, you train and for sure you’ll improve. But you’ll never get it to become a new Maradona!
The Focus
Once you have the gift, you have to train it in the right way.
Whatever activity you engage in, you work it out all the time with the targeted aim to improve it. This requires a mental pattern considered by many a flaw: the stubbornness. Namely the ability to be OBSESSED with an idea and its REALIZATION. This quality / flaw originates in the deep unconscious mind. It comes from the irrational part of our brain. The right one. The famous 95% of our hardware that we don’t know how to use. Where intuition and creativity are usually located.
That’s what brings you to endlessly repeat a gesture or action in order to make it perfect.
This obsession about continuous improving is powerful and is just FOR IT’S OWN SAKE. There can be no other purposes. If the goal is money, the trick is not working. It sets in motion immediately RATIONALITY : the left brained mindset. A mere 5%. If the crown does not fit or color is wrong, the practitioner with a deep true motivation will not cement it. If the ultimate target is the CASH / TIME ratio … of course he will put it in the mouth of patient. This explains why CORPORATE THINKING in medicine will NEVER work. Out of grabbing in pockets of patients.
That’s why the new Ferrari can’t be the motivational leverage. Motivation will last only if it is an irrational pursuing of an IDEAL GOAL. Rooted in your uncoscious mind.
The Environment
You may be a genius. Able to memorize hundreds of pages in Sanskrit. But if you were born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong family, everything is much more difficult. Some examples taken from a book by Malcolm Gladwell2 well explain this theory. Bill Gates comes from a rich family. He got lucky to be sent to an 8th grade school where he could use one of the first main frame. The boy Gates could put on a free ride his OBSESSION. He writes programs day and night, on Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas, Easter and August. Success comes well over 10,000 hours spent writing computer programs. Read the book. I recommend it.
Try to apply the same “think-tank” to dentistry. We focus for example Prosthodontics. The core business of dental practices. Also one of the most difficult dental disciplines.
You are getting your dentistry degree at 24-25 years. You practice dentistry working for others. Basic dentistry: dental cleaning and fillings. The next step is about some surgery (extractions) and endodontics (root canals). The most “precoscious” one, already at this age trys to prepare some crowns. To a relative or a close friend. Someone you can do the work at least a couple of times, arguing that it is “an impossible case.”
Let’s say, between 25 and 30, you hardly have a chance to deal with something serious. Unless you were born in a family of dentists.
Or you went to work for free!
Prosthodontics is expensive and people do not trust to jung dentists. They want the BOSS in office. Therefore the jung dentist is supposed patiently to run out his career or to become himself owner of the practice. If your dad is cashing in, maybe with 30 years finally you start to have a 20-25% time/work dedicated to prosthodontics. At 35 you give up endodontics. And right after you stop also to make fillings. But you still perform surgery and implantology because of your EGO and for the cash.
Let’s do a little bit of math: 52-6 = 46 working weeks in a year. At least 6 weeks of vacation a year as a dentist you deserve. We’re not in China. 46×8 = 368 hours / year.
That means10,000 / 368 = 27,17 YEARS !
If you realize that until 30 a dentist’s experience about prosthodontics is near to zero, rounding down (you got two years off because you’re a genius and you worked on Saturday sometimes) I assume you finally have spent at the age of 55 the 10,000 hours and you are mastering NOW preparations of crowns for your patients!
To become a Master means that for 25 to 27 years you have worked AT LEAST 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, 46 weeks a year, FOCUSING ONLY on prosthodontics.
But it’s NOT ENOUGH!
You must have WORKED OUT every single day with the STRONG MOTIVATION of improving. Taking care of every single crown as if it should be presented at an international workshop about dentistry!
Furthermore: you need the GIFT.
In addition, if you were born in the right place, in the right family, at the right time … you did bingo!
You’ll be the NEW Leonardo da Vinci of ceramics. At 55 years, however.
And what about other disciplines or personal life?
If you want to do something else, simply double the hours of work and cut off sleep. Work according the Chinese habit. Make only three days/year of holidays.
OTHERWISE you end up subscribing to courses of prosthodontics (which are among the most popular) without a sufficient number of hours of practice in your hands.
OUTCOME: poor. Preparations do not improve and impressions are bad. You get even more depressed. Your selfesteem is under your feet.
You start to think to be a loser. That’s a bit unfair. Because it’s NOT true.
You just didn’t have the right time to develop the SKILL: the 10,000 hours.
You buy an instrument or a course and you got the shortcut.
Effortlessly.
Working from 9 to 17. Caring about quality of life. And on Friday afternoon … let’s enjoy the weekend. August is no way to work. Three weeks at Christmas, Two weeks at Easter.
And the 10,000 hours? At least in one discipline they should be spent. And that’s something tough.
Maybe that’s why dental technicians, VERY OFTEN, complain about preparations and impressions of their customers dentists?
Maybe that’s why, on average, people are dissatisfied with the dentist’s crowns? Including VIPs, actors or people who do not lack on money.
The simple truth is:
- NOT everybody will become the New Leonardo da Vinci of dentistry
- DO not let you overcome from anxiety and compulsive shopping of
unnecessary stuff.
- There are no SHORTCUTS.
- There are NO BABY-GURUs or geniuses.
ALL you need is self-confidence, to improve day by day, loving what you are doing. All informations you need is available on internet or in books. You only need to devote TIME. A very LONG TIME. ON YOUR OWN.
It’s a matter of choice.
It’s a matter of will.
It’s up to YOU.
Massimo mazza
- K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, Clemens Tesch-Römer : „The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” ; Psychological Review 100, no. 3(1993):363-406.
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Malcolm Gladwell : “Outliers – The story of Success” – Penguin Books 2008.
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