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Real Life Comprehensive Dentistry
1 hour Lecture with Dr Lincoln Harris
Lincoln shares his Protocol to Diagnose and Treatment Plan with patients.
Learn how we find out exactly what the patient wants?
Improve how you talk about the cost of treatment.
Learn how to give people time and increase your acceptance rates.
This recording is taken from the start of our full 2-Day lecture on Rapid Efficient Treatment Planning.
Should we treat patients the way we want to be treated?
It's a very seductive thought isn't it, you know this is what we would choose for our mouths so that's what we should advise our patients to do.
But is it really the right way to treatment plan?
Mostly we start out at dental school treatment planning by treating disease, we do diseased based treatment planning and then later we learn aesthetic based treatment planning.
Facially generated or digital smile design, an aesthetic driven treatment plan and there's many other ways to treat and maybe we could do functional training planning but the problem with treating our patients the way we want to be treated is that our patients are very different people.
It would be like if we went to buy a car and the man who's selling us the car has two children and so he wants to tell us that the car that we need is one that can hold two adults and two children but maybe we've got four children, or maybe we have no children, or maybe we are excited about cars and he's not.
You can see we're quite different to our patients, we're highly educated, we have high incomes and quite often teeth form a very big part of our life but the reality is for most people teeth don’t matter, that's just how it is.
They're not that important to most people, the best way to treatment plan is to ask the patient about their values and their goals.
What do you want? What are your Values?
You see some people might value low maintenance, they don't want to have to see the dentist very often, so treating them for periodontal disease which needs three monthly follow-up is a bad idea for them, because they may just never do it and so our initial treatment will be wasted.
Or they may have high caries rate and they really aren't interested in changing that the coke drinking and sugar eating habits, so doing 25 fillings in their teeth is just a bad idea for them.
Or it may be that they're not really interested in straightening their teeth so doing aesthetic based treatment planning is a bad idea for them.
So you can see that the patient may have very different values to us, now they may want to have their teeth little whiter but don't want the maintenance of whitening, so they might not be a good candidate for whitening, they may be a better candidate with veneers, because if we do something that doesn't meet their goals and their values then our treatment plan might be a failure even though it's excellent.
So the best way to treatment plan patients is not the way we want to be treated it's the way they want to be treated
What dentists are saying about this course...
We have to begin with treatment planning. No great dentistry is ever accomplished without it.
How to find the patient's goals:
Patients rarely tell us what they actually want. They tell us what they have. “My upper right tooth is broken and my lower one hurts” tells us nothing of what the patient wants. Learn efficient techniques to cut through to the patients prime motivation. Without finding a motivator, the patient just won’t go ahead with treatment.
Efficient consulting and examination:
These days, very comprehensive examination of the patient is required and very thorough documentation. Traditionally, this was so time consuming that it limited the number of new patients that could be seen. Learn how to do extremely thorough examinations very efficiently through high level training of auxiliary staff. How staff training can help you do much better notes. And how informed consent procedures can be improved with no extra time.
Photography:
Learn how to integrate photography into every single patient visit and why it’s incredibly important. Why it’s worth taking a full set of photographs for every toothache patient.
Rapid treatment planning:
Learn to treatment plan concepts before specifics. Find out why most dentists treatment plan back to front. How to keep the patients goal front and centre of the treatment plan. Balancing idealism with pragmatism. When you can compromise and when you can’t. Have the basics of your treatment plan in place before the end of the first appointment.
Consultation:
The biggest difficulty is marrying;
Money:
Learn techniques to talk about money. Discuss budgets with confidence. Scale up and down treatment plans without doing poor quality work. Learn staging techniques to break up the cost. Find ways to mix and match techniques to meet a budget.
When to present early and late:
Some patients are ready to go straight away and delay will just turn them off. Other patients will need time to process the information. How do you decide whether to go straight to final treatment plan, and when should you take time. What tactics have you got to delay treatment when necessary.
What records do you need:
What records do you need to treatment plan? What records do you need to demonstrate planning? How many radiographs?
Treatment planning practice:
Treatment planning only becomes second nature with a lot of practice. Much of the second day will be spent treatment planning cases. Initially slow detailed treatment plans will be done. Techniques to improve your speed will be studied and further exercises will be done to improve you skill and speed.
What dentists are saying about this course...
RETP made me stop feeling guilty about the condition of my patients’ mouths and teeth (before they come to me) and made me realise that I can do short treatment plans if they can’t afford big ones
Down to earth. real. practical. I could do my treatment planning decisions faster. Thank you.
RETP is a great well rounded and interactive course. A must if the dentist wants to be able to succinctly diagnose and treatment plan appropriately. I learnt not to project dentist's fears and emotions on to a patient, not to look away when quoting cost and that the anxious patients once calmed are the best patients. When Lincoln introduced himself and came across as a down to earth dentist just like the rest of us. The information provided that I took on being applied to 'real world' scenarios in the practice I work seamlessly helping me become more effective at discussing information which saves time.
It was a great course, the questions asked by the attendees added even more value and would have been great to have a frequently asked questions section.
I learned how to discuss budget with the patient and the importance of goal orientated treatment planning. It would be very useful course if working in private practice but difficult if working mainly NHS. It is competitive for similar courses in the U.K. I could see improvement in planning cases throughout the weekend. Clearly a lot of effort was put into preparing RETP. A well-organized course that delivered what was expected.
The course was a great overall course, general one that can be applied day to day to help improve case acceptance for larger, complex treatment plans.
I think it's given me more confidence as an operator to know that some of the things I'm doing well and some of the things that I could really improve on.
It's been a huge motivator for me to learn more, definitely, so that I can give more options for my patients and myself and I think that would give me more confidence in seeing everyone, all the patients, things like that.
I think the biggest thing was where you got to value yourself.
I think a lot of dentists ... It's easy to give in to the patient and you start paying for things, but just the simplest things such as having confidence when you tell them things.
I think your team is really important. So I think it's more of a holistic, a big approach as to how you should look after your patients, but also your staff and yourself and I really love that, yeah.
I think my approach with treatment planning, I think I'll be more steady and more casual about it. I wouldn't struggle or rush into things.
I think...this has given me a bit more of a systematic approach to how to make the patient feel comfortable and also increase patient acceptance, yeah...
Technique wise, I love the way Dr Lincoln Harris talks about certain things using tires, using different analogies to help get to-it down to the level of the patient and help them understand
So not talking dentistry, we're talking their language.
It's kind of helped me how to talk in their language so that they can understand me better.
Lincoln is a great presenter and the course was very enjoyable and engaging. I ended up appreciating more the end goal of treatment and how to consult with a patient in a confident manner to plan treatment and gain treatment acceptance. I also enjoyed speaking with colleagues attending the course.
I honestly signed up not knowing that I would learn so much; from the simplest terms to use with patients to becoming motivated to learn more about implants and soft tissue management. I wish I had signed up earlier. I feel confident tackling more complex treatments.
Excellent course for anyone wanting to better implement their existing skills and build a base for further clinical training.
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I feel like it's always better to hear it from someone else, that they also have the same struggles you do.
You know look at these things on Facebook and you just see the picture and, you're like, "Wow" "That must be something that's really easy to achieve, why aren't I getting there?"
But, then you hear them say, "No, that's just a picture."
"That was actually really hard to achieve, a lot of hard work." and then, you understand it is a long journey.
It's not going to happen overnight.
Yeah, a real big eye-opener. Also learning little things that you just don't think about you know...
I really think it is worthwhile. You'll definitely learn something.
I think what Lincoln has to say, his years of experience, the type of dentistry he does, it's definitely worth listening to what he has to say.
I really... me personally, I do want to do a lot of things Lincoln does. I have the same interests as him. So I really wanted to listen to how he's achieved what he's achieved and the type of dentistry he does... you know.
I'd really like to get to that level one day, and just be really proud of the sort of high-end work I can achieve... you know, that Lincoln does.
He's not boring like, I've been to a lot of lectures where, like, two hours in I just want to go to sleep or go home.
I think he's funny, his sort of personality that he has is, I think it is entertaining to listen to him...
I'm not bored, ever, with what he has to say.
I've been out for 12 years now and I have mild regret that I did not come to this course earlier. I love the fact that he (Dr Lincoln Harris) is very straightforward. He likes throwing out dad jokes. He's not all that politically correct which I am perfectly okay with. So to be able to sit here and listen to him speak with his natural style, I think it's very refreshing.
It’s very comforting to see a lot of younger grads, people who've been out for three, four years attending this course. I believe this will set a steppingstone, a little platform to greater things in their dental careers so I highly recommend this course to anyone who is thinking about it.
The Restoring Excellence Academy is designated as an Approved PACE Program Provider by the Academy of General Dentistry. The formal continuing dental education programs of those program provider are accepted by AGD for Fellowship, mastership and membership maintenance credit. Approval does not imply acceptance by a state or provincial board of dentistry or any other applicable regulatory authority, or AGD endorsement. The current term of approval extends from 1st of September 2018 to 31st August 2020. Provider ID 386578