Transcript
Speaker: We spent so much time and money and effort. Last year, I got to a point where... February is really hard on people's mental health. You've got figure out what is more important.
Speaker: ADEC's Smart Start program offers first-time practice owners their deepest discounts on equipment and furniture for two years, plus other savings and complimentary services. Ask your ADEC rep for details and start smart with ADEC.
Speaker: Join Drs. Savannah Craig and Renetta Sartor as we navigate life beyond graduation. Real conversations about forging our own paths in our early years in our careers.
Speaker: There's a reason it's called practicing dentistry. Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Graduation. i'm Savannah Craig, and with me as always... I'm Renetta Sartor. Okay, guys, here is a fun episode and it's something that's heading close to home just based on recent patient experiences and just life experiences as well. So this episode will be all about expectations. And by that, we mean expectations that our patients have of us, expectations that we have of our patients,
Speaker: expectations that our team have for us, expectations that we have of our team. And one of the things that Savannah and I probably most importantly were thinking about and talking about briefly just now was, you know, the expectations that we have for ourselves and how we take ownership in that. So yeah.
Speaker: Very loaded topic, Savannah. Where are you at with this today? Well, read read your little quote that ah got me fired up and then I was like, all right, we're going just press record.
Speaker: Yes, I will. Oh, if my... She lost it. Yes. So I was telling Savannah, I was reading a book here recently and it was talking about taking ownership. So I told her one of the questions that I've been asking myself on a daily basis is where in my life am I not taking full ownership?
Speaker: The premise of the book and what it was trying to get us to realize is that taking ownership can help decrease stress and also decrease conflicts.
Speaker: And so I read that to Savannah and she was like, I don't know. So tell tell you your thoughts. yeah I think that i take can take too much ownership of like the whole situation in an unhealthy way and like I am working on it. I can take ownership of like how my patients feel about a situation. i can take too much ownership in like my team being overwhelmed. And we've had this conversation recently, Renetta, of you're trying to put
Speaker: to get them to take more ownership and and and ask them, what do you think so that they can handle these situations and get it off of you? And so i challenged her with is, is, and maybe I got a reframe ownership. Maybe it's not owning it all and putting it all on myself, but knowing, maybe it's more knowing what you can and can't control.
Speaker: can can ownership be that? But I think I, my default is in a very unhealthy way to try to own the whole situation. And then when things spin out of control or don't go the way I think they're going to go, i have unfair expectations for myself to be the end all be all. And I don't think it's fair to anybody else to to own all of that because it takes away the like responsibility and own onus on them to solve their own problem. So it kind of brings up a thought for me.
Speaker: And this thought pretty much is that a lot of times I feel like conflict and stress and that sort of thing comes about because expectations were not met on either side.
Speaker: But I think... What I'm learning is that sometimes people don't know what the expectations are. 100%. So I'm learning to be more clear with expectations. And I think...
Speaker: from an individual standpoint, I'm needing to be more clear with expectations that I have for myself as well. And that's been helping me navigate taking all of the ownership on and then pretty much beating myself down when things don't go as planned. So I've kind of reframed it, like you said, in terms of like, where am I not taking full ownership to mean something different than it once meant, if that makes sense.
Speaker: So it could have been, okay, you know, where did I not or where was I not very clear in my expectations for like this to happen? You know, how do we restate what the expectations are?
Speaker: And then hold, you know, ourselves and whoever we're having this dialogue with accountable for it. Can I play devil's advocate? who Go for it. love this. No, I 100% agree with you. But I'm also like tired.
Speaker: ah And i there are situations where I just feel like We should already have this expectation of like how we treat each other, how we treat other people, how we behave in a professional environment.
Speaker: And it gets exhausting to have to teach people. Like I understand. I definitely understand that teaching them your expectations and setting clear expectations is going to solve a lot of problems. But also like you're coming to the dentist and The expectation is I'm going to put my hands in your mouth at some point of today's visit.
Speaker: Right? Like, do I have to sit you down and explain that for us to not have a freak out? Yeah, I think. That's exhausting. It is exhausting. You know, I was talking to like my CPA the other day and we were talking about continuing education.
Speaker: and talking about how like as dentists especially you and i we go and have all these continued education funds things done and we listen to and we we learn all this stuff but a lot of what we learn are like refreshers right with a tidbit more so why don't we feel like our patients and our team deserve those refreshers that we're getting all the time. That's an excellent point. Yeah, I know. i kind of thought about it and, you know, she kind of phrased it in a way to say like, are you looking for a job?
Speaker: But not just any job, a really good job. And by job, we mean in dentistry, of course. And a job in dentistry could be an associateship, starting your own or acquiring a practice. There's a lot of ways to be a dentist. If you're looking and you've been looking,
Speaker: Ignite DDS coaching is the way to go. Take a look at IgniteDDS.com. We've got all of the resources to find the perfect dentist job for you. She phrased it in a way of like fiscally, if you think about it, like how much money is spent on doctor education show a yearly basis versus how much is spent.
Speaker: You know, it could be talking about how to educate our patients or not even educate our patients, but how we teach our patients how to treat us, you know, and how we treat our patients and kind of the same for teams. Like, totally it's not a whole lot of continuing education that is in place for like teaching dental assistants how to do stuff or even teaching front desk how to do stuff.
Speaker: And that's where like coaching comes in into play, right? Because yes, dentists, sometimes we don't know what to know to create like a curriculum for teaching our team how to do their job because we only learn how to do ours. No, 100%. 100%. spent so much time and money and effort perfecting. i mean, we just came off of some really awesome guest episodes and talking about like, we wear a lot of hats and we really were trained to wear one. One of them really well. Right. And the other ones you just have to like learn as you go, which is hard. It's really hard. Our job is really hard.
Speaker: It's really good. It's a really nice job too. But February has kicked my butt in a lot of ways. We've had equipment issues. We've had illness in the practice. We've had patients. I think...
Speaker: You know, seasonal depressive disorder is a real thing. And when people haven't seen the sun in two months, February is really, I think, hard on people's mental health, whether we talk about that or not. But I think that plays a ah factor in like how quick people have been to to snap this month. Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine because as we know, Savannah's in Ohio and I'm in South Carolina.
Speaker: And this year we actually got lots of ice and snow. And I can only imagine living in Ohio because after about two days of like not it not being sunny and like, you know, South Carolina.
Speaker: Typical weather. Yeah. I was over it. I was just like, I'm ready for the sun to come out. Sun, please come melt this ice. Please come melt the snow. yesterday we had an 85 degree.
Speaker: like Don't talk to me. Don't talk to know. But i was I was so happy. Yeah. So we had 65 and sunny Wednesday and Thursday, and everyone was so nice on Friday and reasonable. And like, could that be coincidence? Maybe. But like, there's, it plays a part. I'm, I believe, but...
Speaker: No, I think back to like the expectation piece, part of it too, as you know, more you, you know, as you know better, you do better and maybe to a fault. So I i do Botox, which majority of the Botox I do is for family members and my team.
Speaker: But every once a while we have patients that want it for TMD. And the way that I look at Botox is that it's kind of like like a cortisol injection in your knee. like it's going to It might help with the symptoms, but it's really not the root cause, right?
Speaker: And I've got Botox in my own masseters. I do it. My mom gets it. And it's really helpful for us, but it's not always helpful for everyone. And it is something you have to do all the time. And In my practice, it's a group practice. And so people other colleagues will send patients my way for concerns about TMD. And it's really my job to educate them because I'm the one with the training.
Speaker: But sometimes patients come in the beginning when I first started doing it they would come to me all hyped up from the other doctor like, you're going to be the silver bullet. You're going to fix my thing. And I wanted to be that.
Speaker: Right. I think I'm in this job to help people. I want to help people. I think it can be helpful. But the more I've done it now, the more I'm like, this might not help you at all. This is not going to solve the problem.
Speaker: i am happy to do it for you. We can try it. And the thing that I've learned to communicate, jaw pain and jaw tension is really, i think, kind of weird and we're used to what it feels like. And Botox is a slow onset and a slow offset. So for me and other friends that I do this for,
Speaker: I don't notice the relief until it's starting to wear off. And so it's really hard in the beginning. i didn't communicate that well to patients of like, you might you might actually get relief, but you might not notice for three months. And then when it starts to wear off, you're gonna be like, oh my God, all this tension is back. And it's kind of weird to think about like the absence of tension. Yeah.
Speaker: Right. as ah As a feeling. But so I had some really bad patient experiences because I set these expectations that I could not deliver on. And I've had to now learn. And maybe now I've gone too far the other way because I'm literally talking patients out of treatment. But I i want you to know one hundred that I don't know if this is going to be good for you. It's going to be expensive.
Speaker: It's going to be something you have to continue to do Take it or leave it. Yeah. I mean, you bring up a really valid point in – A similar experience for me is in residency with implants. Yeah.
Speaker: And so, you know, in the beginning, super gung-ho, you know, all right, this tooth can't be saved. We should do an implant in that area. and I think at the root of it is we've lived and we've seen things not work and we've learned. And so it can be perceived like I'm talking my patients out of implants too,
Speaker: But I think we're doing our job in terms of communicating, you know, that informed consent piece, yeah you know, the risks and the benefits of it. And sometimes we only communicate very well the benefits and don't really talk so much about the risks, which does both us and the patient a disservice because, you know, they're thinking it's the magic bullet and then they come back to us and then pretty much,
Speaker: we they There are expectations that have been unmet, you know, so nobody ends up happy in that scenario. But if you take the time like to explain them, OK, here are the risks and it may not work for you because every patient is different, then, you know, at least expectations have been set at the beginning. And sometimes you may have to refresh, as we said earlier. what those expectations were. And then i think moving forward, everyone takes ownership and what the results are. And if we need to pivot and go someplace different in terms of treatment modality. Yeah. I think it's really humbling and you have to be kind of humble to say like, I don't know.
Speaker: it like Yeah. And I, and I joke and you and I have joked all the We're like, I'm not God. Like the the the thing you were born with failed or broke. Nothing, absolutely nothing I can put in here is going to be better than that. And it really freaks people out, but it's honest and it's, I don't know. It's also, I think, kept the right patients in my chair and and and gotten rid of the people I will never be able to please. So for better or for worse. how how have your How has like expectation setting changed for you with yourself, with your patients, with your team, with your with your time and your business? Like all of those things have to be in alignment.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we both know that I have a all of all or nothing type personality. No. Yes, all or nothing. And it's just kind of the way that I'm wired.
Speaker: And so, you know, buying an office that I knew I would have to put a lot of energy in in order to grow, I feel like it was all for probably the first like three years.
Speaker: yeah And then last year I got to a point where, and we kind of talked about this, I had all of these expectations and timelines of what I thought it should be, you know, in the practice in terms of,
Speaker: goals and it didn't it's not always about financial goals but just goals of like what i felt it should feel like and you know what the team should be and how the office should be and then you know i had a therapy session with my therapist one time last year and she was like yeah but who said who said that needs to be like the expectation or you know like and i'm like well i did you know And I'm like, yeah, I'm doing this to myself.
Speaker: Yep. And it's not constructive. you know So I did an exercise where I listed like all of the things that had been wins and the wins kind of outweighed anything. So then it kind of caused me to like do some inner work on myself to kind of look and be like, okay. And we talk about this all the time. Okay.
Speaker: What is enough? Right. You know, the fact that we have all these wins in a three year time frame. Like, this is awesome. Like, yeah, we're winning. OK, maybe I need to like not be like I'm all in, but maybe I don't have to be pedal to the floor. Maybe I can ease off the gas a little bit and kind of let some things happen organically.
Speaker: And I think. home and at the office and just me in general, it has put me in a much happier place. I think this is a lot like what we talked about coming into this new year of we both sort of reframed like our CE journey and like Finding a little more peace and balance in a way. um And yeah, like you said, you can be in it and not consumed by it. Yeah. So yeah all of nothing pretty much had me like entirely consumed to my detriment.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I think we were even talking about like, what is enough? And that can be financially, that can be in so many ways. And one of the things that you and I were texting about when I was out in Arizona was what what procedures do I need to offer? do Like, am i am I offering enough? Am I doing enough?
Speaker: Am i taking out hard enough teeth? Like, you know, there's this idea behind like when you do IV sedation, like, yes, ideally, I would take out every single friggin awful wisdom tooth and do the molar endo while I'm there because it's convenient to the patient. But also like, I don't want to. but Yeah, exactly. Is that good enough? Like, yes, I think so. Yeah, I think it's more so, okay, like, will the expectation are the are the expectations, one, realistic, but two, do the expectations get me to where I want to be?
Speaker: And do I need to be where I want to be in this time frame, you know? Yeah. Like, Does it make the success less of a success if it takes me a little longer to get there? But I kept like my values and principles and stuck to my guns about it. And yeah so it's the questions that I probably ask myself on a daily basis to like keep myself in check. No, and I also think there's this piece of like whose goals actually are those? Like, yes, they're mine on some level, but like there's external factors. You know what i mean? Like who, why, why is that my goal as well? Like, yes, there's there's good to have like growth in all of these things, but at the end of the day, like, i don't know if your bills are being paid and you can do these things and not, you know, see 10 more patients an hour, like sick. I don't know.
Speaker: I feel we were talking with Dr. Fleming and he was saying about, you know, career trajectory, like growth plateau down. I feel like I'm doing a this number right now. But that's how life is though, right? yeah it's It's not linear. It's like.
Speaker: There are ups and downs, but, you know, you might feel like you're on a downward in one aspect of your life, but you might be upward in another aspect of your life.
Speaker: And you've got to figure out what is more important, you know, like, is it more important for you in this phase of life to not take on these third molars or molar endo?
Speaker: Yeah. Because for me, yes, that's it. you know like And we've had the same training yeah residency. So I think realistically, we could probably take out most third molars if we wanted to. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm in a place where like I don't want to. and i yeah Yeah. i'm not If I see a molar that needs endo, there are referral pads out already. I'm even attempting it. I'm like,
Speaker: You know, I know my strengths and this is not one of my strengths, but I'm smart enough to like be surrounded by specialists who, you know, will do the thing and do it at a much higher quality and efficiency than I ever could be able to do. Yeah.
Speaker: Ten times faster. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting because i I don't know how if you have protected your algorithm from dental social media. i am inundate inundated. But it's really interesting because I see obviously not everything you see on social media is real. But I have seen a lot more of these like dentists that are like, I'm a referologist and like, I don't do anything. And I'm like, hot damn.
Speaker: That could be so nice. I think I would get bored. But I think in the time that I was in training and coming out of dental school and residency, like there was this push for these super GPs. And I i probably am one to a certain extent. And i love it. I like the difference. I like the sedation and all of those things. But like, wow, you could just be like, nah, I'm going to do fillings and crowns and and still be successful. And that's sweet. Right. And can you can't you just imagine how happy those people are, though?
Speaker: I mean, I do hate fillings. I would much rather take out. But if fillings and, you know, crowns were the only thing that they love and that's all they were doing. Yes.
Speaker: Why not? Awesome. I keep joking that I just want to take out perio-involved teeth. Like, I'm not making the denture. I'm not doing anything else, but you got a full mouth of perio, I'm your girl. You know, i feel like you could you could grow that if you wanted to. I have faith in you. Yeah, I don't know. But I do like doing all the other things. And then you deliver like a really nice crown and you're like, wow, look how pretty that is. Yeah.
Speaker: But... But I think that goes back to expectations, right? Like when it's going well, we're all for it. But then when it's not going well, it's like, well, who set the expectation that it's always going to go well?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I have started being really, i don't know. We'll probably, the pendulum will swing back. But like every extraction, i'm like, this is going to be the worst time of your life. It's going to be really bad. And then it's like a number eight and it comes out so fast. I'm just like, oh my
Speaker: It's a win for everyone. But then when they kick my butt, the patient's like, no, you told me this was going to suck bad. But it's also been very funny because i tell this, you know, I've recently been like, no, it's going to be the worst experience of your life. And then I'll pop out like a number 16 that's like conical.
Speaker: And then the patients are like, no, you're great. And then I want you to take out this horizontal number 32. And I'm like, Nope. When you know, you know. Yes. But I think it really because they're like, you said this was going to be really hard. and I'm like, no, but this is hard. Beyond my pay grade. Yeah. No, thank you. But I don't know. It's it's it's a weird job. the other day, like I was trying to explain it to Adam, who he I mean, he knows that like I work hard and like our job is hard. But I was like, all right, let me break this down for you. I saw however many patients today.
Speaker: Divide that by the eight hours I worked. I saw i had basically four meetings an hour, right? Two columns for me and then two hygiene checks-ish, give or take, if it was like evenly spaced.
Speaker: Imagine you had that many meetings every hour and somebody expected you to deliver like a presentation or you know what I mean? Like every single hour. And he was like,
Speaker: Oh my God, I would die. And I was like, yeah, that's my every day. And like, I've got to be on it for every single person. and there's the drill sound going like that's what I when I get home. I'm like, we're sitting in silence.
Speaker: Nobody look at me because I'm just like overstimulated all day. But it was think it finally clicked a little bit more for him of like, oh, that is a lot going on.
Speaker: And setting the expectations for my loved ones that I might not always be super sociable after work. Yeah. i think we hit a lot of great points here. So for our listeners, we'd love to hear all things expectations from you guys, from expectations of yourself, expectations, you know, of your team, expectations of patients, and then the reverse of that.
Speaker: we love... your feedback. So definitely let us know. Catch us back next time. Thanks for listening in. thank you for joining us for this episode of Beyond Graduation.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to share it with a friend. Connect with us on social media at Savannah Craig DBS and at Dr. Underscore Sartor.
Speaker: And remember, you are not alone on this journey. ADEC certified pre-owned equipment is a sustainable, affordable choice that makes genuine ADEC equipment available to every doctor. Each package is sold on a first-come, first-served basis. So if you see one you like, contact your dealer. For more information, go to www.adec.com backslash findadealer. Thank you for listening to Beyond Graduation brought to you by Ignite DDS and Future Dentists. This episode was sponsored by Ignite DDS Coaching.
Speaker: We build self-determined futures. For more information, please reach out to the Ignite DDS team.
