I give the guy who cuts my hair a chuckle every now and then when I arrive for my usual buzz and I briskly enter his shop with a magazine or two tucked under my arm. His poker face belies his reaction, “Uh, oh … here we go again.” I’ll show him a picture of some up-and-comer in the world of sports or entertainment and I’ll say, “I want my hair to look like his.”
Now this is laughable because I don’t offer my barber much with which to work. For those of you reading this who have no idea of my appearance, my hair is going the way of my lawn - each year a bit more sparse and desert-like. But what’s more amusing to my barber is the reality that - even if he could give me that hair cut - I’m not going to look much different than I do now. I have still the face of a 55-year-old man with a crooked nose, more than my share of “laugh lines” (which I did not come by while enjoying a hearty guffaw) and an asymmetrical mug that is framed with ears that aren’t quite evenly balanced on the sides of my large head.
My personal grooming challenges aside, you can appreciate the fact that there are similar, albeit more onerous, problems for you as a dental professional. How often are you placed in a similar position of confronting unreasonable expectations? Your patient comes to you with high hopes for spectacular results from the dental finesse you’re about to perform (be it teeth whitening, veneers, straightening, etc.). This individual expects you to wave a magic wand transmutating instantaneously him or her into one of the elite and stellar outcomes we see on television’s one-hour reality programs like Extreme Makeover. What do you do? This is one of the questions considered at a recent dental conference.
With little time to absorb and enjoy the southern charm that is Georgia’s, the March Physician Insurers Association of America (PIAA) Dental Conference convened in Savannah, bringing together dental professionals, underwriters, attorneys and risk management specialists from the professional liability insurance industry for a short and not-so-sweet conference. Armed with up-to-the minute best practices, evolving standards of care, ongoing treatment improvements and recommendations, etc., dental educators and practitioners focused attention on risk-related issues confronting not only those in cosmetic dentistry, but practitioners facing other issues harboring a mine field of potential liability: current and future risk exposures associated with dental interventions prescribed for and performed on those patients treated with a regimen of bisphosphonates, improved communications with patients, greater comprehensive informed consent discussions, and the need for more complete and thorough dental record documentation habits. A spate of recent dental litigation outcomes was reviewed to garnish the robust agenda.
You may be tempted to dismiss this article, arguing “this is the kind of stuff every dentist is taught or every dentist ought to know.” True. But dental professionals continue to become embroiled in litigation and allegation. And so – like any professional - a refresher can’t hurt and knowing what’s on the dental horizon may give you a “heads-up.”