Episode : #867: Identify (+ Implement) the Best CE Opportunities

Podcast Description

As DAT visits with practices, the consultants are hearing more about CE options: doctors and team members who feel like they’re consuming too much or spending too much money for not enough or not the right kind of education. This episode is all about finding the right CE for your practice right now. Tiff and Dana talk about taking inventory of what you want to do as a doctor/team member, what you want to do better, and how to get the best bang for your buck.

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Transcript:

Tiffanie (00:14.535)

Hello everyone. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have with me my fave.

Dana, Dana, you celebrated your birthday recently. I know we already talked about it on the podcast, but I thought about you all weekend and how was it? How loved and special did you feel? You have this incredible family and these kids that just like pour so much love into you and a husband who loves you to pieces. Like how was it? I know you didn’t do anything super crazy special yet for your birthday. That’s in the works. And I know you had a ton of sports, but how, how was your birthday weekend?

Dana (00:49.276)

It was awesome and you’re right, like my celebrations are coming this weekend, but I just got extra quality time with family, which I always love. And when your birthday falls, near Father’s Day, right? Just sharing that extra time. So just lots of family love, lots of quality time, and it was a great weekend.

Tiffanie (01:07.079)

I love that. Yes, you’re right before Father’s Day typically, right? And I’m right before Mother’s Day, so I totally get it. And then we get like everything gets smashed together. And I think on Father’s Day too, like you’re like, I don’t want to take away from you and your day. But you know, I’m a big birthday person. So thankfully, it’s Mother’s Day for me and not Father’s Day because that would be a hard decision for me to make.

Dana (01:23.196)

Yeah.

Dana (01:34.78)

I love the honesty tip.

Tiffanie (01:37.799)

Yes, yes, and you know, my boyfriend knows that. He’s very well -prepped and he does really well. I spent a lot of time when we first started dating, ensuring that he understood how important the birthday time period was. And that’s everybody’s birthdays. I like to celebrate everybody’s, but specifically my own is like a holiday for me. Dana, I wanted to, before we really dive in, I really wanted to chat with you and really see how things are going in your world of consulting.

You have so many practices that you work with constantly. Doctors that you do one on one with. I know you do a lot of virtual within our company and you do travel. You have quite a few travel clients this year that got put on your schedule that you’re just, I mean, I’m like you’re on the road all the time and I love it personally. I love seeing somebody else on the road as well. How are things going for you? And then also I know we have our newest virtual product and kind of coaching that,

you’ve helped lead a lot of those coaching sessions for and really jumped in and helped to answer a lot of the doctor community questions and things like that. So from your standpoint, how are things going this year? We’re about mid -year. How are things looking for a lot of the practices that you’re working with one -on -one?

Dana (02:53.372)

Yeah.

Good, I love, I just love the opportunity to be in office with teams. It brings a different dynamic that I’m used to. Of course, I love my virtual clients equally, right? But I do love the in office visit, so I’m excited for that. I think this year has been a little bit different. I think that, you know, there’s economy concerns, there are hiring concerns, there are short staffing concerns that we’ve been dealing with for about the last year to two years. But I do feel like this year,

Tiffanie (03:05.031)

Yeah.

Tiffanie (03:22.407)

Yeah.

Dana (03:24.11)

This is a pivotal year for a lot of practices and so I’m just super excited to get in there to help, to grow, and to be a resource to all of them.

Tiffanie (03:34.023)

Yeah.

I love that. I love that. I think you’re right. That’s definitely something that I’ve seen with a lot of the practices I’ve been working with is just the hiring degrees and what that looks like and the weather and the forecasting within that department is really difficult right now. And I think it’s just something that it’s the world we’re living in right now. And it is the way that it is. So doing the best that we possibly can. I know that you and I have done a lot of onboarding and operations manual and employee handbooks.

kind of conversations this year. So I think that’s really beneficial for a lot of our listeners. And I think that they’ve been able to get a lot of value out of those things. And then also something we’ve been working really, really hard on ensuring is that everybody really knows how to read their overhead, how to kind of manipulate those numbers within the overhead and how to make sure that they’re staying on track and that their company and their business is still seeing growth even when there are things that are out of our control. Where I think before, like the team aspect was something that

that we could really count on being there for the most part. There were so many of us in the dental industry that were like, she’s going to be here forever. And that’s never something we want to count on. We don’t want to be people dependent. We want to be systems dependent. And I think right now’s climate tells us why we preach that and why we have been preaching that for so long. But it’s just such a different space that we’re living in right now than we’ve ever lived in within the dental industry before that I’ve been here for the last.

20 whatever years, we’re not going to put that out there. But.

Tiffanie (05:07.239)

It’s just a little bit different. So I think something I’ve been working with my doctors a lot on, and I know you do as well, is really starting to prepare and get ready for what you want your practice to look like. So at the beginning of the year, we set a ton of goals. And we work backwards from those goals to really figure out where we should be at every mile marker throughout the year. So every half year, every quarter, every month, every day, kind of re -engineering those numbers and those trackable items, whether it’s number of fluorides,

or number of implants placed or dollar amount that we’re producing or collecting. We’re always working backwards from that. So something that I’ve added in for a lot of my practices and something we’re heavily looking at now being about midway through the year is the CE opportunities that our doctors are taking. And I think one, my big, my big…

Reminder right now is, again, we’re about halfway through the year. And if you don’t have your CE done already and you don’t have your CE planned, this is your reminder to start preparing for that. And I wanted, Dana, I wanted you and I to really just kind of go through some tips and tricks that we’ve utilized with some of our practices we work with all the time to help them narrow down and figure out what they’re going to do. Dana, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this or not, but I have a few doctors.

who love to learn. I think most of my doctors just love to learn. They’re constantly in the education phase and overload and overwhelm themselves with CE. And Dana, have you seen, I’ve seen a couple of my doctors that just do so much CE in like two to three years. They just jam pack it and then they’re like, I can’t do any, Tiff, I can’t go to another course. I can’t go to another class. I can’t implement anything else. I’m spent.

I’m just done for. Have you seen that, Dana?

Dana (07:00.38)

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that and then I’ve seen two doctors that like they do all of it but then the implementation like it never gets there and it’s like well that was great to learn and like I’m super excited about it but I didn’t actually bring it into the practice.

Tiffanie (07:07.815)

Yes.

Tiffanie (07:14.183)

I totally agree. I totally agree. And when we’re like, I feel like it’s like a tsunami when we just, we get overloaded, right? And I know we do book club every month in our company. And sometimes I even get to the point where I’m like, I need a little bit longer between the book, like where I’m at now and the next one, because I feel like if I move on, I’m just consuming at this point and I’m not actually utilizing or implementing the information that I’m getting. And so I think CE is the same, right? It’s similar.

And I think we have a tendency, right, as human beings to take in as much as we can, and then like our brains decide subconsciously what we’re gonna retain and what we’re not. And then we’re like, I never, I do this all the time where I’m like, I’ve never heard that before in my life. I’m like, actually I’ve heard it like 15 ,000 times, right? But today it’s stuck. And I think CE is very similar for doctors where you really just need to know what it is that.

you need to know. You can’t just go in blind. You can’t just go in thinking, I just need to soak up all the information. And for our newer doctors, that’s really hard to figure out because there’s so much information. There’s so much to do and so much to learn that you didn’t get in college yet, right? At university, you didn’t get all of this stuff. And so you’re coming out, and you’re just inundated with all of these options. So Dana and I, you and I did a lot of research.

podcast recently. I’m really proud of it. It was a really good podcast. We’ve done some really great podcasts recently, but we did a podcast regarding budgeting and the PNLs. And so I want to remind everyone to always go back and listen to other podcasts that may not seem like, my gosh, this doesn’t seem like a relevant topic for what I’m looking for today. I’m looking for CE. That’s why I’m listening to this one. Like Tiff, don’t be crazy. I hear you. But there’s a budgeting one in there as well that we discussed CE budgets.

And I think starting with a budget is huge, because Dana, I think we’ve also both experienced the situation where doctors are consuming so much that it’s becoming a financial burden, where it’s like, I can’t, Tiff, I can’t afford to go to any more classes. Dana, have you seen that with some of your practices as well?

Dana (09:25.5)

Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes it is they can afford the actual course, right? Or they look at just the cost of the course and not necessarily all that is involved in the course, the travel, the hotel, the food, all the things, because some of these courses are over several days, right? So there’s added expenses to them. And so I do agree with you that like the budget is the first place to start.

Tiffanie (09:46.247)

Yeah, I love that. So go listen to that one. And then Dana, you mentioned implementation as well. And it made me think, I did a few months ago, I think it was a few months ago, I don’t even remember now. And we can probably pull the podcast numbers and put them in the description here. But I did a podcast with Dr. Dave Mogadam. And I’ve worked with him for years. He’s one of my prized possession clients that I will just always work with. And he did a really great podcast with me in regards to actual

implementing the information that he’s gotten from a lot of the courses that he’s done. So if you’re looking for a CE, you’re looking for ideas and information, this podcast obviously is going to be a good one. But then Dave and I, Dr. Dave and I actually did run through a lot of the CE that he’s done and how he’s been able to implement it. So that was actually a really good podcast. So go back and listen to that one as well. So when I’m helping my clients to differentiate or my friends, my doctor friends, they’re like, Tiff, I just don’t know what I want to do.

I wanted to go through, Dana, some of the ways that we help them narrow down what it is that they should be doing. So I think we talked budget. So budget number one, but budget doesn’t always mean cheap. Budget doesn’t mean don’t do the expensive ones. Budget doesn’t mean do only the ones that are $1 ,000 or less because you’ve got travel expenses. Budget just means to make sure that you’re.

saving and you’re putting in another account like a CE budget so that you can do any of the courses that you want to. So my number one or my two things that I make every doctor do when they’re choosing CE, it’s not like a, you know, put my finger on that piece of paper and like which one does it land on. I want you guys to take inventory of what you actually like doing. I had a dentist recently, she called me.

And she’s like, Tiff, I need CE. I need to ramp up my production and my practice. Something’s got to change. Something’s got to give. And I said, great. Let’s talk about this. Let’s figure it out. And she said, I’m going to go to a course for root canals because I refer a ton of root canals out. I said, OK, that’s fair. Most GP dentists do refer a lot of root canals out. I’ll give you that. I’m totally down with that. And then I said, do you like doing root canals? Does that light your soul up?

Tiffanie (12:05.607)

And she goes, no, I hate them. And I said, OK. I said, I hated them too when I had to assist them. So I get it. They’re tedious, and they’re annoying, and I’m not even doing the work. And she said, no, I absolutely hate them. That’s why I referred them out. And I said, OK. Then why are we bringing it back in office? I said, do you think that you’re going to be efficient and effective with root canals even after going to a course if you dislike them? And she said,

No, I don’t think so. It’s going to take me too long. I said, great. This was a wonderful 45 second conversation on talking you out of a CE that’s not going to do you any good. So it was great. And she changed it. She decided to go for sedation. And that’s something she’s very passionate about. And it’s going to change the face of her practice. I think it’s really cool. But I didn’t talk her into that. I just asked the questions of, is that something that you actually like doing? So I make them go through and look at, what do you enjoy doing in your practice?

And then what do you want to get better at? So a lot of doctors love placing implants. And they’re like, I just don’t have enough implant opportunities. We can talk about that. We can create the systems to find implant opportunities. It’s there. We’re just not looking for it. But do you need to get more confident in placing implants so that you see the opportunities? Is that really what’s going on? So I think taking inventory of what it is that you actually like doing.

And taking inventory of what you want to get better at is key, totally key. Dana, do you have doctors that you’ve had similar situations with or conversations? And then kind of taking that inventory as well, how do you help them go through that when you’re working with practices?

Dana (13:47.388)

Yeah, I actually just had a similar conversation to that and it was based on root canals, right? This doctor loves doing root canals, but the team was struggling scheduling them with her because one of the associates is much faster. So their automatic schedule default was to put them on the associate and she was getting frustrated because it is something that she loves doing and wants to do more of. So we did have the conversation about, hey, this is a great opportunity, right? This is where we want to utilize some of your CE budget because,

Tiffanie (13:49.735)

Hahaha.

It’s always ricking us.

Tiffanie (14:10.151)

Yeah.

Dana (14:17.294)

if this is something that you absolutely love doing and you just need to be more efficient at it, CE is a great opportunity for that.

Tiffanie (14:25.127)

Totally agree. Totally agree. And there’s so much CE out there. So then the next layer is doing the research on the courses. And I have doctors email me constantly, hey, Tiff, do you know of any courses that do XYZ? Do you know where this is? So we definitely use the similar or same tools as you guys have. I definitely pop on the Google, and I’m like, hey, find me this course. And I definitely help narrow it down. But the next phase there is really the research. And when I’m having my doctors research the courses that they want to do,

It’s going to be based on interest. It’s going to be based on time, right? Can they get to these courses? How long is the course? And how much time do we have to take off of work? Which, by the way, that should probably be added into your budget as well, time away from the practice. But we’re also looking at who’s hosting the course. Do we know anything about?

this company or the doctor or the individual, it’s not always even just a doctor, who’s hosting and who’s putting on the event, who’s giving you the information, who’s teaching and training you for this. Do you know anything about that?

Do you have any reviews? Are there reviews you can find online? I know there’s a lot of doctor forums. We have our own doctor forum. If you’re not a part of that collaborative team, then let us know, reach out, and we can let you know how to get in there. But there’s so many different doctor forums. Facebook, there’s all kinds of spaces to ask the questions. So do the research, figure it out, ask your peers. One, if they’ve ever done the course, if they’ve ever heard of this doctor, whomever is putting it on.

and if they have any good reviews on it. Dana, I’ve definitely seen, there’s a rise I think in CE opportunities for sure. I think there’s more CE opportunity today than there ever has been, but I’ve also seen a rise on, I don’t know how to even say this, just I feel like kind of arbitrarily going to an event and just being like, that event was meh.

Tiffanie (16:27.943)

And it’s like, well, did we know anything about the person before we went? And I think that’s not always a step we had to take before. And honestly, I remember back in the day when I was in practice, our CE came from the ADA event, the AZDA event that came every year. And we’d just go to the convention, and we’d wrap up so much CE there. But now there’s just so many other opportunities. I think it’s kind of flooded and making it difficult to narrow it down. How do you help your doctors narrow that part down to really

decide is this a good CE event? Am I going to get something out of it and is it worth the money?

Dana (17:03.356)

Yeah, I think the first thing I say is just assess what type of class do you feel like you really need? If you’re going to get more efficient at something, it might be better if there is a hands on portion versus a lecture, right? Or something in person that you can ask your questions versus virtual. You can certainly learn a ton virtually, but I think think about why am I going to this course? And so like what type of platform am I looking forward to begin with?

once you narrow down the type of platform you’re looking for, whether it’s hands -on, you know, just a lecture or virtual, then it is, like you said, do your research. Is there information on the speaker? Can you talk to somebody who has taken the course? Do you have a platform that you can ask those questions and making sure that even the bullet points of what is in the course align with the reason why you’re going or doing it in the first place.

Tiffanie (17:56.135)

I love –

I love the idea that you said of making sure that it’s hands -on if you need hands -on like you’re a root canal doctor who wants to get more efficient and better at root canals and he actually enjoys them. Huge benefit there. Most doctors are on the other side of the spectrum, so it’s why endodontists I think do so dang well. You’re welcome. But that’s huge because if they go to a course or a lecture where they’re just listening or they’re watching online or they’re watching root canals happen,

live in front of them, but they’re not participating. It’s not a live course. It’s all kind of digitalized. It’s hugely different because you’re not practicing. So it’s kind of like trying to learn. It’s expecting your team to learn new verbiage skills and be really proficient at it and get it spot on every single time without ever role playing.

So if you’re going to these courses, an implant placement course, and I’ve had plenty of doctors come back from an implant course, and they’re like, it was OK. It was just a lot of lecture. And I didn’t actually get my hands dirty. I’m like, well, do you feel more confident? They’re like, no. I feel like I have maybe more information, more clinical knowledge stored up in my brain. But I don’t actually feel more comfortable doing it. But when they go to a hands -on implant placement course where they’re placing 30 implants in a weekend on real humans,

that the company has vetted that needs these implants, that’s when they come back and they’re like, I’m ready to place an implant. And now you have X amount of implants backing you up. Because I think.

Tiffanie (19:31.239)

I don’t know, I’m making this up perhaps because I’m not a dentist and I’ve never physically been in this situation, but I can only assume that when you’ve taken a course like implants or root canals and you’ve only done the handful that you did in your initial course, maybe you did five or 10 and you’ve placed one in practice, I would think in your head you’re like, I have not done very many of these and I truly am not sure how this is gonna go every time you’re getting in there. But when you go to a course where,

where you get to place 30 in a weekend, plus the ones that you’ve already done, you’ve got 30 trials behind you that you’re like, no, actually, this is like second nature. It’s like making someone answer the phone in front of you on a role play 30 times. They’re like, OK, no questions asked. I know how to answer this phone call. And I think I’ve seen in my practices and my doctors so much confidence come from making sure that they went to a

CE that was one, super beneficial towards what they were trying to implement, and two, gave them some of that background and that experience that they need to really hold themselves more confident. Now, Dana, question, has this doctor been able to find a hands -on course for root canals that they’re going, or are they just starting this process fresh right now? Yeah.

Dana (20:55.1)

They’re just starting the process fresh. But I did send a few resources that I think will be good.

Tiffanie (21:01.063)

Awesome. That’s so cool. Awesome. All right, guys. So.

I’m going to say one thing I see doctors do when it comes to CE is they look at their production, they look at their schedule, and they say, I want to make more production. I want to make more money in the practice, and I want to stop referring all of these things out. It’s the first place people look. But sometimes they fail to think about, am I referring these things out because I actually don’t enjoy them. Please remember, when you’re for a job,

to do something that you hate that you really don’t enjoy, you are going to be slower than someone else who loves doing it. Okay, so associates are great opportunities. If you have associates in your practice or you’re considering associates, this is a great opportunity to get a yin and a yang. My doctor that asked that she’s like, I think I want to do root canal. I’m like, do you love root canal? She said no, her associate loves root canal. So I said, great, let’s send her to courses so she can get more efficient at it.

it and you do something totally different because actually you like the aesthetic and the cosmetic world and it makes no sense for you to go detour from that. Just stick with what you love. So watch what you’re looking for. What are the parameters that you’re basing your decision off of and really make sure it’s something that you’re going to enjoy doing. And you guys, you know what, caveat, you may not know if you like it until you go to the course and that’s okay too. There’s never a wasted CE course in my opinion because there’s always some

thing that you can bring home. I had a client that was like, Tiff, this front office course we took was like,

Tiffanie (22:40.935)

the worst thing ever. And I was like, okay, potentially for sure, but there’s gotta be something that you were able to take away. And we dug through, we dug in, and they found quite a few things that if for nothing else, they were like, honestly, seeing how great our practices and the systems that we’ve been able to put into place together and all of the pieces that we have were on track and were ready to add to those. So they were.

Anyways, they were doing a lot of the things this course was doing, but they found pieces they could bring home. So even if it’s a course that you get done with and you’re like, dang it, why did I do this? Stop yourself right there. Look for the positives. What could you bring back to the team from that course? There’s always going to be something. So take inventory of what it is that you want to do. What do you want to learn to do better?

And then what’s going to be the best bang for your buck when it comes to a CE course? Always ask your peers for references, recommendations. Always do your research on the course and make sure that you know who’s putting it on, who’s teaching it, and their credentials so that you come out feeling even more confident. And then Dana, tell me again just a quick overview of three hot ticket items for a budget, and then they can go listen to our budgeting podcast as well.

Dana (23:56.636)

Yeah, Hot Ticket IM Sir Budget is just knowing really truly what you can spend within your overhead on CE and then not just the price of the course, but what is the total cost, including the travel, the lodging, the food, of going to do that course. And then like you said, don’t forget the production that it will cost for you to be gone or out of the practice.

Tiffanie (24:06.311)

Yeah.

Tiffanie (24:19.527)

I love it. I love it. Super actionable implement to implementational pieces. You guys, I hope that you loved this. That’s a wrap for us today on CE. Please drop us a five star review with information on any CE courses that you guys have taken and you’ve loved. We are always looking for more information. Like we said, we get asked all the time from our clients and.

non -clients, people who aren’t even with us yet, what kind of courses are out there. So if you ever have any information, please just send it our way. If you have any questions or you want to know more about our doctor community, please email us in at Hello @ TheDentalATeam .com. We can’t wait to hear from you.