The May 2o19 issue of the ADA News featured an article about an alliance between the ADA and the Alliance of the ADA working together to help dentists avoid burnout.
That’s good advice for any dentist, but it’s far easier to talk about than to accomplish.
Dentists who are dealing with utterly packed schedules don’t get downtime. They don’t get time away from their practices. They don’t get the chance to take an extended vacation to rest and recharge.
Not only is today’s dentistry a high-stress situation, it’s also a potentially damaging one. After all, dentistry causes a lot of wear and tear on the neck and the back, and the potential for lasting damage grows the longer you practice.
Don’t believe that? One study found that a preponderance of dental students with an average age of just 25.6 years experienced pain as a result of the awkward positioning involved with providing care.
Add another 15 or 20 years of abuse, and things don’t look good for dentists.
However, you don’t have experience that kind of stress or physical degradation. There’s a better way to practice dentistry.
Let’s Get One Thing Straight
You don’t have to treat everybody. In fact, you can’t treat everybody who needs dental care. There are only so many hours in a day and days in a week. Once you accept that idea, you can proceed to its corollary: you can choose how many patients you’re going to see over the course of a day, and for how many days a week.
Most dentists would say they can’t do that, because they’d be leaving money on the table. Not only that, they see no way to grow their practices without putting in all the hours and days.
Neither of those points are true.
If you see fewer patients, but higher-value patients, you can make the same money or more that you do now while working fewer hours each day and even fewer days each week.
Dr. Ron Receveur is a case in point. Formerly a general dentist, he now works just three days a week, doing only the cases he loves to do – dental implant consults and implants – and he’s out of the office by 3PM most days. Moreover, he grew his practice from $800K to nearly $3.6 million over five years.
Dr. Ron’s practice is now the premier dental implants destination within a 300-mile radius. He’s even had people fly in from both coasts and overseas to have him do their implants!
You may not be interested in doing implants, but the point is that better dental patients are out there. You just have to know how to attract those patients and convert them into appointments to grow your practice own your own terms.
Enter SmartBox
SmartBox is a practice growth company specializing in turning your marketing into bottom-line profits. Those profits are what you need to ensure that you’ll continue to thrive rather than burn out or be forced out by injury.
Schedule your 25-minute Practice Growth Call to get your actionable growth plan and realize your practice’s full revenue potential. You’re going to leave this call with an action plan to add immediate revenue into your practice and overcome your most pressing problems.
Burnout is not inevitable, but neither is thriving in dentistry. Put the odds “ever in your favor” with SmartBox.