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Dr. Steven Guelff: Clinical Mistake
162 Plays4 months ago
This week, Dr. Tanya Sue Maestas chats with Dr. Guelff about his incredible journey from Michigan to Florida, swapping construction for a rewarding career in orthodontics. He shares the touching story of his late wife, Lori, and their mission to fight esophageal cancer through their foundation and living her cancer out loud .
Dr. Guelff highlights why getting scoped at 45 is a game-changer for staying alive. He also brings a dose of humor with some sage advice:
"Don't be the flat squirrel, okay? 🐿️ That means you don't want to get run over by the tire of the car and be that flat squirrel on the ground. You want to make a decision. And one way or another, it's either going to be good or bad."
From teamwork to top-notch communication skills, and making those proactive decisions in orthodontics, Dr. Guelff’s insights are invaluable.
Whether you're a seasoned dentist or just starting out, there's something here for everyone. Stay proactive about your health and keep striving for excellence!
About the Guest:
Dr. Steven Guelff is a seasoned dental professional with nearly three decades of experience in the field. Known for his profound expertise and dedication to patient care, Dr. Guelff has excelled in dental and orthodontic practices. His career is distinguished by continuous learning and mentoring, which has deeply impacted the dental community. He is recognized for his ability to foster strong relationships within the industry, contribute to professional development, and advocate for balanced personal and professional lives.
Key Takeaways:
- Play the Long Game: Success in dentistry requires a long-term perspective, constant learning, and enjoyment of the journey.
- Skill Improvement: Use practical strategies such as practicing new procedures during lunch breaks and seeking mentorship from peers.
- Relationship Building: Dentistry is fundamentally a people business, making relationships with patients, team members, and the community paramount.
- Work-Life Balance: Strive to balance personal life, relationships, spiritual growth, professional development, and physical health.
- Perseverance and Facing Fears: Overcoming challenges and fears head-on with grit and determination is essential for long-term success.
Connect with Ignitedds: @ignitedds
Connect with Tanya Sue Maestas: @tsmaestas.dds
Learn more about Well Received: wellreceived.com/ignitedds
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Dental Fuel, the podcast that focuses on what no one else is talking about. Mistakes. The dental world is full of before and afters and no one is talking about the middle. Dental Fuel brings you the unspoken in-between. Welcome back to another episode of Dental Fuel. This episode of Dental Fuel is brought to you by Well-Received. Did you know 69% of patients say they would switch providers for a better experience? To level up your practice, you need to ensure your patient experience is better than your competitors. So where do you start? From the very first hello. While received is a 24-7 answering service for dental practices. Their team of professional receptionists are on hand 24-7 to support your callers. That's day and night.
00:00:46
Speaker
365 days a year. Set your practice apart by guaranteeing your patient's calls are answered quickly and by a real person every single time. Ready to level up your patient experience? As a dental fuel listener, you can enjoy an exclusive 50% off your first three months of service. Head to wellreceived.com slash IgniteDDS to get started. It's Friday and we're back with another guest. This week I have Dr. Steven Gelf. an expert orthodontist with a compelling personal and professional journey. In this episode, Dr. Gelf takes us on a trip down memory lane, sharing his early life and his shift from construction to dentistry. He also shares a little bit about the profound impact of his late wife, Lori. This episode shows us a little bit about Dr. Gelf's personal side, his professional side, and also some invaluable tips for fellow dental professionals.
00:01:41
Speaker
And of course, we have our first mistake, a clinical mistake that Dr. Gelf has made. Let's listen in. Dr. Steve Gelf, welcome to Dental Fuel. How are you doing today? Having a fantastic day today, Tanya. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to have you with us here at Dental Fuel and for you to tell us a little bit about your story, your family's story. ah But we are, though this will be released later, we're gearing up for the holidays here. And are you ready for the holidays? Yes, ma'am, ready for the holidays. Yes, we are. We're getting geared up here, and we're just trying to take it a day at a time. We usually shut down for a week at the over the Christmas holiday. Sometimes two weeks, we're gonna do a week this year, and we want everybody to have some family time.
00:02:30
Speaker
Oh, that's wonderful. And it's ah ah definitely a a fun and important time of the year. But Dr. Gelf, I would love if you would tell our listeners and myself but a little bit about yourself. I'm originally from Marquette, Michigan. i So i mean that means I'm a Yup'er. And I moved to Florida back in 1978 after I graduated high school. I grew up in a family of three boys. And it was always about sports in our family. So we were always playing hockey or pick up football or basketball or whatever. My parents owned a laundromat. which was a true family business where we all were expected to work in the laundry. So it was a great place to grow up. But I tell you, Tonya, I got really tired of all the snow and the ice and the cold weather and the gray days so in northern Michigan. So I moved to Florida back in 1978 and I did things a little bit unconventional. I worked in the concrete construction business and worked ah building high rise condominiums so for about eight years before I went back to college and did dental school and orthodontic school.
00:03:30
Speaker
Very cool. And I know that you have a very special story that's there to your heart about your wife. Would you mind talking a little bit about her and um your journey together with her with what she had? Yes, my wife's name was Lori and we were married for 25 years and we have three boys and my wife was a dental hygienist. believe it or not, and we had the best of times and the greatest relationship, but back in 2016 she got diagnosed with esophageal cancer and she passed in so January 12th of 2019 and it was a very hard thing with our family.
00:04:13
Speaker
ah We can't choose our circumstances, we but we definitely can choose our attitude and how we respond to things. And my wife and I decided to live her cancer out loud as a family. And I guess we didn't want anybody else to get sick. And so in her memory, our family has created the GELF Family Zofageal Cancer Project and another foundation called Lori's Light. and with the family esophageal project, we are all about prevention and early detection of esophageal cancer. And so one thing I can like tell your listeners, if you're 45 years old, you should get scoped. okay So stay alive at 45 and get scoped. Something that a lot of people don't know is not only when if you do an upper GI and get scoped, you can also have your lower GI done at the same time. So you can do two for one.
00:05:08
Speaker
and esophageal cancer is really a beast of a cancer. Most times when it's detected, it's usually detected at stage three or stage four. And that's why it's so it's so important to detect it early. And I will tell all your listeners, if you're having any of your patients or any of your family members are having a difficulty or problem swallowing, they definitely should get a an upper GI done as quickly as possible.
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, I'm so sorry for your loss and thank you so much for sharing her story. And I think that you know it oftentimes when there's tragedy, we we try and do our best to bring light of it. And I think that you're doing just that with the foundation that you all have established. And so we will be sure to include a link to the foundation in our show notes to see if anyone any of our listeners are are interested in contributing in some way, maybe they can do so. Thank you, Tanya. That means a lot to ah myself and our family. Well, Dr. Gelf here at Dental Fuel. We are dedicated to talking about mistakes and learning from each other's mistakes so that way we can grow together as a profession and just gain some pearls of wisdom from each other. So I'm excited to hear about some of your mistakes that you have made in your time of practice. And so kicking this off, I would love to know about a clinical mistake that you have made during your time in practice and how you overcame that.
00:06:31
Speaker
Thanks for that question, Tonya. I think it's so important to, let's talk about what a mistake is really, okay? And mistake, I had to look this up on the internet and a mistake is defined as an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong, okay? And when we are, practicing dentistry or we're doing things in our home life and that things are if we make a mistake, we have a we have a choice. We actually have a mindset or a choice that we can make. We can actually continue to make those mistakes and that will lead to a thing called failure, which is a lack of success or we can
00:07:07
Speaker
We can choose to have the mindset to succeed and learn from our ah mistakes and improve on them and try to get better and have that mindset and we can become successful with what we do. So it's a choice that we make every day. So in clinical mistakes, ah many made in the last 29 years. um i I probably have four or five I could probably share. Just really quick, like, uh, uh, one of the first things is I guess when I first graduated from orthodontic school is I wanted to be perfect. Okay. And it was hard for me to realize that perfection is something in our mind. Okay. And it's not, it's not something really possible. Okay. If you really think about it.
00:07:56
Speaker
And I think what we need to strive for is excellence. And if we if we if we have in our mind what perfection is and we do our best, we will try to produce excellence every time. So I think that is one of the first things that I learned early in practice. Second thing I learned a little later was we need to let patients, we need to educate and inform our patients, but we need to let patients take responsibility for their treatment. you know They need to really show up to the office and in the orthodontic world, um you know ah you know whether a patient decides to wear or not wear their aligners or wear or not wear their rubber bands or choose to go to the dentist or not go to the dentist ah or or you know choose to brush their teeth or not brush their teeth that is a choice that they make and so um you know that is something I think is really important and I like to work with my patients and we actually do an oral contract in my office
00:08:53
Speaker
or explain to the patients and the parents what the responsibilities are for them, as well as the responsibilities for myself. And we all have to work together in order to give each of our patients their best possible smile.
00:09:07
Speaker
A third ah a clinical mistake would probably be that you know i you have to realize that braces, an orthodontic care is an elective procedure. okay And that yeah we can take the braces off if things aren't going where we need to. We can take the braces off at any time. We can take the orthodontic arch wires out at any time. And we can also put them back on at any time. So um so our patients that maybe aren't ready or patients that maybe we we've maybe you' not made the right choice to put those braces on for them, we can take corrective action and make things better, not only for the patient, but for the parents and their family.
00:09:50
Speaker
Also, a fourth thing is communication skills, I think are really important, especially for a young doctor coming out of school. um And it's something that needs to be developed. And one of the great things is I was wife married to my wife, Lori, for 25 years, and she was the master communicator. And I learned so much from my wife as far as that. But also, there's so much things that you can learn online. And you can pick up things from reading and attending seminars and even going to your rotary club. You can learn about communication skills. So I think that's a great thing. And then I think a last clinical mistake that I can ah
00:10:32
Speaker
ah talk about is the failure to implement, okay? Is where we maybe have that fear to or we just put things off. And I have a saying in my office, don't be the flat squirrel, okay? That means you don't want to get run over by the tire of the car and be that flat squirrel on the ground. that means you want to make a decision and one way or another it's either going to be good or bad and if it's not so good you can always tweak it and manage it and try to get better or discard it or if it's working good again you're going to tweak it and make it even better. So those would be five a clinical mistakes that I have made and maybe some pearls on how to make things better in your office.
00:11:19
Speaker
Excellent mistakes and pearls. I love the note that you mentioned where you know it's it's important for our patients to show up and take that responsibility, but it really is a group and team effort from and know the clinician side, the assistant side, but also from those patients that are coming in. I think together is really where we come where we can have successful treatment if we all work together. So I think that's really important. I think that thats that was really, really great that you added that. Are you ready to level up your patient experience? Be sure to visit wellreceived.com slash IgniteDDS to find out how you can master patient communication and offer exceptional service 24 seven, 365 days a year while getting valuable time back to focus on growing your practice. Isn't Dr. Gelf just wonderful? Tune in next week as we continue talking about more mistakes and Dr. Gelf continues to share some of his professional and personal life. See you next week.