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Dr. Mark Hyman: Clinical Mistake
32 Plays10 days ago
In our newest episode of Dental Fuel, we sit down with the incredible Dr. Mark Hyman, whose story will inspire and humble you. From nearly quitting dental school to building a top dental practice, Dr. Hyman opens up about his missteps, triumphs, and the mentors who changed his life.
Key Takeaways: "I started something, faced failure, but then I blasted through it." - Dr. Mark Hyman.
His honesty about mistakes, growth, and resilience is a must-hear for anyone on their own journey.
- Value of Mentorship: Dr. Hyman emphasizes the profound impact mentors had on his career, urging young professionals to seek guidance from experienced leaders.
- Patient Communication: Effective communication is crucial. Dr. Hyman shares strategies for gaining patient trust and addressing their concerns openly.
- Handling Clinical Mistakes: Dr. Hyman recounts his clinical errors and how he learned from them, stressing the importance of preparation and continuous improvement.
- Transformational Education: The Pankey Institute played a crucial role in Dr. Hyman's professional growth by teaching him to view dental care holistically.
- Practice Management: Lessons from industry experts like Linda Miles influenced Dr. Hyman to manage his practice effectively, resulting in substantial growth and success.
Tune in to learn how transforming your patient interactions can create lasting trust and better outcomes. And don't miss his clinical mishap that turned into a teaching moment for the ages. Let’s learn, grow, and fuel our passion for dentistry together!
About the Guest:
Dr. Mark Hyman is a distinguished dental professional with an illustrious career spanning over three decades. He is a quadruple Tar Heel with undergraduate, dental school, and residency credentials from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also teaches. With a career highlighted by his transformation of a bankrupt practice into a top 1% practice, Dr. Hyman is a recognized speaker and mentor in the dental industry. He has held 51 seminars last year alone and has presented at prestigious conferences like the CDA, Hinman, and ADA. Despite retiring from clinical practice due to back issues, Dr. Hyman continues to inspire and educate through his teaching and speaking engagements.
Connect with Mark Hyman: https://drmarkspeaks.com/
Connect with Ignitedds and Dr. David Rice: @ignitedds Free Intro Call
Connect with Tanya Sue Maestas: @tsmaestas.dds
Learn more about 90 Day JumpStart : https://ignitedds.com
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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. Dental Fuel is brought to you by 90 Day Jumpstart, a program to help you increase production and break free from financial stress.
00:00:25
Speaker
If you've heard him speak before, you know that this week's guest is a special person. Dr. Mark Hyman joins us at Dental Fuel to share some mistakes and some pearls of wisdom. Dr. Hyman is a distinguished dental professional with an illustrious career spanning over three decades. He is a quadruple Tar Heel with undergraduate dental school and residency credentials from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
00:00:50
Speaker
In this episode, Dr. Hyman recounts his early career struggles and the pivotal moments that led to his success. He highlights the importance of mentorship and continuous learning in the dental field. Let's listen in to our conversation with Dr. Hyman and a clinical mistake that he has made. Dr. Mark Hyman, welcome to Dental Fuel. How are you doing today? Dr. Tan, you see what a joy it is to see you. it's ah need to meet a rising star. I should have gotten autographs while they're affordable. I understand it's too late for that, so maybe later. I'll send an autograph. No, I'm just teasing. That's very kind of you to say. I should be the one asking for the autograph. I don't think so. We're all on the same team. I'm really proud of what you've done at a young age in such a short amount of time and the great things you're doing down in Texas. Well, thank you for that. That's very special to me. I look forward to your message going national and international.
00:01:45
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining me today at Dental Fuel. and And I'm so excited to share with our listeners a little bit about who you are and your message to the world. But before we get into it, I would love if you would tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
00:02:02
Speaker
Sure. Tanya Sue, what is impressive about me is very little, I was probably would be voted the least likely to succeed in my dental class. I'm a quadruple Tar Heel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill undergraduate, dental school, residency, not teach at the UNC Adams School of Dentistry. I was our class president, um just jamming, coaching in mural basketball and playing soccer and tee ball and Midterms came, I kind of forgot to study and I got crushed. And actually the first week back a spring semester, first year dental school, I quit dental school. I was sitting in my apartment on a Thursday night trying to cry and nothing would come out. And the only way I could go to sleep was to say this nightmare is over. And I went to see the Dean, that was our class president. I had a big presence at the school, went to see the Dean told him I was going to quit. He said, great, go into class, come back at halftime and I'll sign you out.
00:02:57
Speaker
So with my tail between my legs, I went slinking down the hall of the UNC Adams School of Dentistry and ran into a young professor, Dr. around Ron Strauss, who saved my life. And he said, Mark, it's okay. Being a dental student is nothing like being a dentist. Give it another hour, give it a day, see how you do. I had a decent morning, went back to the dean, told him I wasn't gonna quit, and he acted disappointed.
00:03:19
Speaker
May he rest in pieces. And I muddled my way through the rest of spring semester. Started in clinic that summer, caught fire, and I graduated dental school in three and a half years. We don't let you do that anymore because we want that last tuition payment. So I had six months to kill before I started a two-year oral medicine hospital dental residency at Chapel Hill. And I joined American Dental Volunteers for Israel and moved to the Holy Land. Grew a beard, grew my hair long. My first week in Israel, I did more work than I'd done in three and a half years in Chapel Hill.
00:03:50
Speaker
and live just north of the sea, a Galilee right at the foot of the Golan Heights was an unbelievable experience. I did that for four months. And my last week there, I was in the Jerusalem bus station. I look up and I see this face and I was like, God, she's cute. I won't get to talk to her. I went and sat in the back of the bus. Here comes 22 year old Anita strutting, tight Calvin Klein jeans, hair all dolled up, monkey scarf walks her up to me. So two other Americans, she leans in and goes, hi guys, one company.
00:04:19
Speaker
So we talked for four hours and got engaged five months later. So as of last month, it was our 39th anniversary. So it just might have worked out. We'll see. So I did the residency in Chapel Hill. July 1st, 1986, I bought a bankrupt practice in Greensboro, North Carolina, and made it worse. Dr. Tanya Sue, there's kind of a recurring theme here, isn't there? I start something, I face plant, and then I blast it.
00:04:45
Speaker
So I bought this bankrupt practice, made it worse, and then God smiled upon me because I went to a Linda Miles seminar. If you don't know of Linda Miles, she's the grand dame of practice management leadership. She is the person most responsible for our valuing our dental teammates.
00:05:00
Speaker
And she looked at me, some pathetic character from some Oliver Twist novel. Please, some, I have some more. I said, Linda, I bought this practice. I don't know what I'm doing. And she said, poor child, let's have lunch. And she listened to me whine and moan and complain and said, why don't you do this, that, this, that gave me five little ideas. Next month, the practice doubled and then doubled and doubled and doubled. So God bless Ms. Linda Miles, Dr. Kathy Jamison from Oklahoma, Ms. Naomi Rodie from Arizona, Gordon Christensen,
00:05:28
Speaker
from Utah, Erwin Becker from the Panky Institute. These men and women put such a tremendous amount into me. So I love that I get the privilege now of mentoring the next generation of young speakers and superstars and dentistry like you. So that's my story. I want to bankrupt practice, made it worse at two and a half employees.
00:05:49
Speaker
And then by the end of my career, we were at top 1% practice in the United States with production collection, overhead control, team retention, and fun. So I started doing mom and pop speaking, and the professor Ron Strauss, who would save my life, asked me in 1989 to come back to the dental school at Chapel Hill and tell my story. and And that was pretty amazing. That was really my first public seminar, first public speech. It took 10 years.
00:06:19
Speaker
doing little mom and pop study clubs and little things until I spoke at the CDA at Anaheim in April in 1999. In 1999, I had five seminars. 2000, I had 20. This past year, I had 51. So I had 32 years of private practice, which I adored.
00:06:38
Speaker
And then my backup gave out, ah my L4O5 blew out. So I can't practice anymore. And that was kind of heartbreaking, but I'm teaching at the dental school at Chapel Hill. I'm on the admissions committee and about 20 other committees. And I have the privileges of the podium of speaking. I'll be at the Hinman in Atlanta. I've got the star of the North star of the South. I got the ADA in New Orleans coming up in the fall. And I've just loved the privilege of sharing the message of our type of dentistry.
00:07:07
Speaker
Mark, thank you for for sharing your story. ah Very beautiful, beautiful message as well, too, in the sense that you are sharing that ah something that I feel that I am a product of those who support me, those who mentor me, and those who believe that I can take the next step forward. And so i I really resonate with what you just shared. And to our listeners who maybe have not had the opportunity to listen to you speak at the podium at one of these events, I highly encourage them to seek you out And I hope that by the end of our conversation, they will understand why. And I'm excited to have you here at Dental Fuel. Here at Dental Fuel, we are dedicated to talking to industry leaders and discussing our mistakes and learning from those mistakes so that we, together collectively, we can become better practitioners and better in the world of dentistry.
00:07:53
Speaker
And I'm very excited personally to to listen to the mistakes that you have potentially made in your career. Obviously you have shared one already. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. But the first mistake I'd like to talk about is a clinical mistake that you've made in your career and how you handled it. Boy, boy, boy.
00:08:11
Speaker
there do we have We have an hour and a half, right, to talk about. Yeah, that's right. I got all your time. I'm i'm on your time. That's just the letter A. You know, I pulled a to a wisdom tooth on a patient early in my career and I said, do you have any, are you on any medications? No, you're not taking medications. No, great. Pull the tooth. Blood is pouring out like a spigot. I said, sir, are you on any medications? And he said, no. He didn't take anything. He said, well, I took 10 aspirin before I came in. Mike, oh my God.
00:08:40
Speaker
So I didn't ask, are there any prescription or over-the-counter medications or any homeopathic medications? So that was a mistake. One of the great cases I like to show in my seminars is a case of about Karen. It's a woman who, actually I got to do my full upper rehab one and I was just a dancing bear. This was 1989 and I prepped all the upper teeth.
00:09:05
Speaker
cemented them all a few weeks later. Six months later, she came back to let me do the mandible. And I'm like, this is awesome. And I did the mandible and cemented that. And the years went by. When I look at the pictures of it now, if you look at the left side, the occlusion, it looks like the letter L. It is so bad. Curve of speeds, anterior posterior curve of Wilson's transverse completely screwed it up.
00:09:34
Speaker
And it lasted 29 years. So I look at that, and every time I look at that, I kind of go, ah, you're such a loser, except it lasted almost three decades. And she and I started talking about redoing it for years before she let me, and she was in a horrible marriage. Tanya Sushi kept looking at me, saying, Dr. Mark, I can't do it. I want to redo it. I just can't do it. He won't let me. He won't let me. This went on over, year after year after year.
00:10:01
Speaker
And then he died. I'm sorry. been The wicked husband died. And she came in and said, he's dead. Let's roll. And I'm like, this is really creepy. But sure, yeah well let's do it. So so ah when I love to show that in my seminar, because I don't tell the audience who did the case, I just show them the dentistry and the porcelain's cracked and the occlusion is horrible. And I'm like, God, who did this work? You know, would any of you go to a seminar by a speaker who did this work?
00:10:31
Speaker
And then I said, well, I'd like to thank you for coming because I did it. And that was 1989. In 1990, I started going to the Panky Institute in Key Biscayne, Florida, which was the transformational moment of my dental career, technically.
00:10:45
Speaker
My time at Panky just completely transformed my career. Or Dr. Irwin Becker and the crew got me to stop looking at single teeth and to take a step back and look at the entire patient, really study the medical dental history, sit down and ask the patient, what are your goals for your health and teeth and your smile to go through an unbelievable new patient experience where you keep asking open ended questions.
00:11:11
Speaker
If we have time briefly, the 10 questions I kind of run through, I used to say, Tanya Sue, do you have any trouble finding your way to the office? With Google Maps, it's kind of an antiquated question. So then I would say, who can I thank for referring you? Because there's a big distinction between, you're part of my PPO, you have to see me. And Dr. Ashley Clark said, you're expensive, but you're the best. And then I would say five magic words, how can I help you?
00:11:36
Speaker
In your own words, why'd you come in today? How can I help you? Patients will often say, I hate my smile. The temptation is to say, well, that's because you have diastom between A9 and Class 2D2 laterals in a V to shade A17, and your mom addressed you funny. I say to folks, don't do that. Keep asking questions. How can I help you? I hate my smile. Tell me more. What about your smile do you hate? Is it color, size, shape? I hate the color, size, shape of my teeth.
00:12:05
Speaker
And how does that make you feel? I don't smile for pictures. Do you have pictures coming up? You keep asking the questions. Two things Dr. Tanisoo that people don't ask is what did your last dentist tell you? It's a huge question. You just left the dentist a week ago, came to see me, but what did they tell you? And often they'll say, well, he was pushing crowns. And then I'd say, well, do you think you need one? And almost always they'd say, I don't know. And then I'd say this magic expression, if I see changes going on in your mouth, do I have your permission to tell you?
00:12:34
Speaker
When the patient says, yes, it's supper time. It's a great time to be a dentist. Okay. Then we keep going through the process and say, why now? Why'd you come in today versus next week, next month, next year? What's the urgency to act? One of the cases I show in my seminar, a woman came in, I hate my smile. My daughter's getting married. I said, really? When she said Saturday, like, Oh my God.
00:13:00
Speaker
You're going to do 10 veneers right before the wedding? Well, yeah, I did. 911, we went into overdrive. The team kicked in. It was amazing. So these are these type of questions. What are your goals for your health teeth and smile? Do you have a budget? Who else is part of the decision maker? And when do you want to be finished? Dr. Tiny Sue, where's the insurance question? Not there. There is one, because I don't care. I care deeply. The patients get what they want.
00:13:26
Speaker
And actually I have a whole seminar called The Questions You Hate, The Answers You Love, where I go over every oppositional question a patient said, including, well, my insurance, what will the insurance pay? To which I would say, it's a good question. What if they don't pay a penny? You said you hate your smile. You said a wedding's coming up. Who's the decision maker here, Edna or you? So in my career, not the biggest, the clinical mistakes,
00:13:54
Speaker
usually were that I wasn't prepared, I jumped in too fast, I didn't really get to know my patient because that is one of the best ways to either get bit in the butt or to be successful is to really out listen the competition. i I really love what I'm hearing here and and two things that stand out for me is, you know, asking the patient if they are open to hearing that feedback, open to hearing what's going wrong in their mouth. There are so many times where I have patients come in and you know i I try to go through things that are going wrong and they're like, you know that's that's your personal opinion. You can keep that. I'm like, oh, it's a little bit frustrating because in in my mind, it is my role as a ah practitioner, as a clinician, as a dentist.
00:14:39
Speaker
to provide them that information and help them make an educated decision for the next steps. But if they're not at that point to to be open to that information, they're not going to be open to taking those next steps. You have to get their permission to take them to the next step. And if they're not ready, there's an expression. My dear friend, Dr. Keith Phillips, who teaches with me at UNC, says your patient's always right, right? They just don't have to be your patient.
00:15:09
Speaker
where they are in their life at this time, it's okay, man, but they just don't have to be your patient. You can look at them and say, what you need is not what I do. Somebody comes in and says, Dr. Tanyasu, I don't want exam, and I don't want x-rays, and I don't want probing. You don't have to have it, but you just can't be a patient here. I'm not putting my name on an incomplete exam. So my coach, Dr. Kathy Jamison, has another wonderful little series of asks. Dr. Tanyasu, can I ask you a question?
00:15:37
Speaker
Yes, please. If you give me permission to do the most thorough exam you've ever had, I'm gonna study your pictures and x-rays and models, and we're gonna sit down and talk about it, then you have my permission to do some of it, all of it, none of it. And you'll see a patient just melt. If you give me permission to really dig in and look here, I'll present to you what I think is the very finest dentistry, and then you can do all of it, part of it, none of it,
00:16:06
Speaker
It's your body, it's your health. Do you like the way that sounds? I do. I sure do. And know if they say no, then you say, God bless. Good luck. Who's next? Dr. Hyman joins us next week once again for another episode where he shares a financial mistake. And it's a big one. Be sure to tune in. If you're looking to grow your practice and need some help along the way, be sure to check out 90 Day Jumpstart. You can start for free by contacting Dr. David Rice. Check out the link to his account in the show notes.