Life's Mission Statement

Almost 15 years ago I came to the conclusion that our government’s efforts to control every aspect of our life was becoming so oppressive that as a small business person it was impossible for me to keep up with all new government regulations.  We opted to hire a staff outsourcing company called Staff Resources who would handle all of our human resources needs and essentially I would be “leasing” my staff from staff resources. Jo, our HR representative from Staff Resources, was in charge of general supervision of our practice. She instilled in me the necessity of equal treatment for everyone in the practice. I could not play favorites with staff members. I had a close working relationship with staff members. We have worked with this concept for many years and it has serviced us well which brings me to the reason for this blog. In contemplating this concept of fairness for all I came up many years ago with my life’s mission statement so I thought I would write it down and it has been in my file ever since and I thought I would now blog it.

 My life’s mission statement reads “I believe that I have a responsibility to be a good person by that I mean fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I do that, if I am good to my family, fair to my staff and patients, true to my friends. If I give back to the community, if I am not a liar, a cheat or a thief then I believe that should be good enough. At the end of the day if there is indeed somebody or presence standing there to judge me, I hope that I will be judged on whether I lived that true life and not whether I worshiped a certain “God.”

 Even though I wrote this many years ago, I believe it is as true today as when we first hired on Jo from Staff Resources to verify that we are “fair” to all of our staff. See you on our next blog. 

Digital Radiographs

We at Boulevard Family Dentistry have been using panoramic x-rays for 24 years to help us diagnose an extended range of potential oral conditions.  These were originally done with analog x-ray film which we ran through an x-ray processor.  That was a great process but had certainly many limitations.  We converted our panoramic x-ray in 2002 retrofitting it for digital x-rays that substantially lowered our patients x-ray exposure levels and improving the image quality.  To take that to the next level, we opted to replace our Gendex panoramic x-ray with a brand new state-of-the-art Orthopantomograph OP30 digital panoramic x-ray unit.  It provides us with many upgrades which benefits us as diagnosticians and the patient with increased diagnostic capabilities.  For the patients that means radiation exposure that is half of what it was with the analog machine.  A total of 10 seconds exposure compared to 20 seconds, that is more that 4 times better than the old analog pano.  Our patients with severe gag reflex or large tori or fearful young patients, the new panoramic x-ray offers external bite-wing radiographs for diagnosing cavities with no x-ray film in the mouth.  We can do temporomandibular joint targeted exposures for better TMJ dysfunction diagnostic capabilities and we have state-of-the-art image quality.  This leads us to a win/win situation for the patients, staff and for our diagnostic capabilities.  We will continue to strive to update our office with the latest state-of-the-art techniques and equipment as always trying to give the best possible care to our large family of patients.

Breakdown

Many many years ago I had a patient that we had been seeing for a number of years who obviously shall remain nameless. She had a tooth that had been bothering her on and off for some time and was very unreliable about keeping her appointments. The tooth got to the point that it failed and I addressed the issue of this failure with one of my good friends the owner of Endodontic Associates. I addressed the issue in a letter and he wrote me back the following letter “thank you for your letter dated 3/5 regarding your patient. I think your letter summarizes the probable causes of the sudden periodontal breakdown nicely. Periodontal therapy as you know can maintain teeth for many many years but for some teeth in spite of ongoing care may cross an age or wear and tear threshold that leads to a change for the worse in their periodontal health. Fractures are definitely a common cause of this type of periodontal failure some periodontal issues develop suddenly and others build up gradually. A change like this with periodontal breakdown is analogous to the physiological change that can lead to a heart attack in spite of the ongoing care to prevent such an event. I suspect that the perio breakdown associated with these 2 teeth was severe enough that I had some doubts regarding the ability to successfully treat them.”  I have kept this letter for many many years in my desk because I firmly believe it is indicative of how we perform our jobs. We try to do the best we can every day but I am not God I am a dentist and sometimes things just fail. It is unfortunate when it happens to you as it did to this patient many years ago but sometimes failures just occur and despite our best efforts to prevent them. These are some of life’s learning tools and I believe we can benefit from all of our life’s experiences whether positive or negative. 

Circle of Life

Being a Disneyholic can have its positive and negative aspects and the one that comes to mind for me most recently is the movie, The Lion King in which there is a substantial emphasis on the “Circle of Life.”  I have had that occur to me and my family several times in the very recent past.  I recently returned from Los Angeles where my mother-in-law who is 98 years old is getting Hospice care at the end of her very long life.  That same week Dr. Naten’s wife gives birth to a new little baby girl, is this the “Circle of Life” from The Lion King? In that same time frame we had a terrible tragedy in my household.  My 15-year-old Morgan horse passed away suddenly due to a rupture of his abdomen into his thoracic cavity which was untreatable. In accessing our sudden loss Karen and I decided it would be best to rescue a mustang from the Bureau of Land Management, who was destined to be euthanized. Once again, part of the “Circle of Life”. These types of situations certainly give me pause to wonder about our place and how we fit into the grand scheme of this “circle of life”. It probably is not dental but I find myself taking a lot of time to contemplate these issues and to appreciate our time together with friends and family as I hope all of you do. Thanks for reading my blog.

My Father's Sayings

I have had several staff members ask me to spend some time writing down some of the sayings that I use all the time when dealing with a variety of patient issues. Many of them have been refined over a period of years but the vast majority of them are based on my life’s experiences both with my family as a child and with my substantial experiences in dental school. With that in mind, I thought I would do several blogs regarding some of those old sayings. I think I will start with several of my father’s old sayings who was an engineer and not a dentist but several of his sayings are applicable to dentistry.

The first one and probably my favorite is that “You pay for the inadequacies of your youth as you get older.” This is very true in dentistry.  If you have cavities when you are young and you have to have fillings done, most likely you will eventually have to have additional restorative procedures accomplished on those teeth as you age. If you have gum problems when you are young those will definitely haunt you in older age as your ability to heal decreases and gum problems become more progressive.  This reminds me of the 2^nd saying which was “the Lord wastes good healing on the young as they don’t appreciate it”.  Once again, if you have gum problems when you are young the healing capabilities that you have as you get older decrease and periodontal problems increase. You can certainly deal with this problem with great oral hygiene but it is always going to be an issue. The next quote which I oftentimes find humorous and I relate a patient at least once a day was my father’s comment to me “Mark, you can have one or two things in life. You can either have children or almost everything else you ever wanted.”  Fortunately, my father and mother picked children otherwise I would not be here. I chose children and I think for our future children are an extremely important portion of our lives and the future of our country. I will be doing more quotes from my father and from my dental school experiences in future blogs. See you in my next blog.

Let's Face It, Being a Dentist Isn't Easy

Make no mistake about it, I love my job.  I have been doing it for over 40 years and hopefully anyone who has done a job for 40 years really loves it.  However, let's face it, being a dentist is not easy.  You are not just running a small dental practice, you are running a small business which is also your families' livelihood.  You are running a small business that requires you to stay-up on all the latest procedures and techniques, hire and fire staff who are an extension of you and your business, all in the effort to improve the lives of your patients even though they don't really want to be in your chair.  It is a tough gig that is demanding and can be draining.  Between the government and its companies, I spend about 40% of my time making them happy.  I came out of dental school wanting to help people have a better smile and better oral health, yet we battle every day with patients that don't want to come in and some days it seems like I care more than they do.  In addition, as with every small business we have staff who don't exactly get along and patients that think I act too much like Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors."  It is an interesting profession in which I have to hear several times a day "it is not you doc, its just that I hate dentists."  Fortunately, I really love my work and I look forward to it everyday, coming in and dealing with all the nuances of a modern dental practice and I plan on doing it for years to come.

See you at my my next blog.

Tooth Fairy Part 2

In our last Tooth Fairy blog I indicated surveys regarding how much the tooth fairy leaves children in the United States. Since the average in 2015 has gone down 24 cents from 2014 to $3.19. This would be the 2nd consecutive year the tooth fairy has reduced what she leaves under pillows. Surveys found that 32% of respondents reported that $1.00 was left by the tooth fairy the most common amount while nearly 20% of the respondents said the tooth fairy left $5.00 under their pillows and 5% of the household reported that the tooth fairy left $20.00 or more. On the other end of the spectrum 10% of survey respondents said their child received nothing from the tooth fairy. Interesting enough comparing moms to dads, the survey found that for the 2nd year in a row fathers reported to be far more indulgent as the tooth fairy, saying she left nearly 30% more than moms did, $3.63 versus $2.87.  Additionally, if you take it down by regions in the northeast of the United States 25% of the children received $5.00 or more while almost 10% got $20.00 or more bringing the average amount in that area to $3.56,  substantially higher than the overall national average. In the Midwest the tooth fairy left an average of only $3.13,  while the west got $3.09 and the south $3.07.  All this is obviously extremely interesting from my perspective. There are certainly differences in the way different parts of the country view tooth fairy issues and it is certainly something interesting to ponder. Hopefully with improvements in economy the tooth fairy can reverse this recent trend of decreases time will tell.

See you at my next bog.