The Chesapeake Institute

by Cindy McKane-Wagester

Nobody would argue that continuing education in dentistry is a good thing. If a practice has made a commitment to excellence, it must ensure that dental team members are providing excellent care to patients. Continuing education by its very nature is designed to improve or enhance professional competence. It is an essential investment for any practice that aspires to quality patient care and the professional growth of its team.

In most good dental practices, team members are required or at least encouraged to attend seminars or classes that refresh old skills or develop new skills. Some practitioners foot the bill for continuing education for their teams; some offer partial reimbursements. Whether or not continuing education expenses are paid by the practice, it considered important for every team member's professional development and is usually one of the criteria used for determining salary increases. It is almost always factored into evaluations of a team member's contributions to a practice.

Dentists and hygienists in every state where dentistry is practiced must earn continuing education credits to keep licenses or certification current. Universities, dental schools, and freestanding institutions related to the profession offer individual programs or courses for dentists or for individual team dental team members; some even present an integrated package of studies for entire teams. In almost every case, such programs are designed to encourage teamwork as well as enhancing professional skills. In almost every case, however, the curriculum of such programs is designed as a pyramid with the dentist at the top of the structure and all other team members layered in descending order. In other words, most continuing education institutes for the dental profession work from the top down. The emphasis is first and foremost on the dentist; the basic premise here is that other team members will sooner or later get the message through a trickle down effect. A graphic representation roughly illustrates this approach:

An additional premise that shapes the curriculum in most institutions is that the focus of continuing education should be on improving skills related to specific job functions and responsibilities. With the exception of courses designed specifically for dentists, very few deal with the concept of the "grand design" of the practice as it relates to the business of dentistry.

Arguably, since the dentist is the principal caretaker of the financial structure and economic well being of the practice, this traditional and time-honored design makes sense. It is certainly adequate. It enables a dentist to understand basic economic patterns and trends that have a positive or negative impact on the practice; it proposes viable solutions to problems that weaken or threaten practice financial health; it provides innovative and workable strategies that permit adjustments and corrections to operating system components when and where they are needed.

On the other hand, the design seldom takes into account the considerable power that a dental team, fully apprised of the "grand design" and fully aware of individual and collective contributions within this grand design, can wield. Undoubtedly, information dentists acquire while attending business classes or seminars or clinical enhancement courses are shared with team members. But again, the model is almost entirely focused on trickle-down impact; the information is second-hand and subject to subjective reinterpretation as it is passed down from the dentist to department supervisors to individual team members.

This article hopes to introduce dental practitioners and their teams to an alternative, a continuing education that deals with this "grand design" from the bottom up: The Chesapeake Institute for Dental Studies.

Based in the Baltimore-Washington area of the East Coast, The Chesapeake Institute is affiliated with the continuing education department of the University of Maryland Dental School, the first dental school established in the United States. All students enrolled in the Institute's programs earn up to 13 continuing education credits recognized by the university and state boards for re-licensure.

The Chesapeake Institute, which opens its doors in September 2004 with an intensive hands-on and didactic course for hygienists, was established to provide affordable and meaningful curricula for all team members. Our primary objective is to help dental practices evolve into Master Dental Practices in which all components work together for the benefit of patients and practices alike. To achieve this end, we will be providing training that fosters cooperation, coordination, and consistency in the individual practice. We will work with team members to improve and enhance all aspects of productivity and profitability from philosophy to production, from staffing to scheduling, from case acceptance to collections, from safety and security to dress code, and more. Seminars and classes will focus on tools and strategies that will define the role of each individual team member within a successful Master Practice and restructure practice departments to promote the business of dentistry.

Our faculty, a diverse and talented group with wide-ranging experience in all aspects of dentistry, will help provide a model of patient care based on a commitment to excellence. Our students will have the opportunity to learn and practice ways to improve patient assessment, treatment procedures, patient education, and patient compliance. Our team-focused classes will allow all team members to improve scheduling for optimal, improve practice statistics by improving case acceptance, create a successful protocol for dealing with dental insurance, and master oral and written communication with patients, vendors, and medical and dental colleagues. It is our pledge to recommit teams to excellence by offering an unprecedented array of classes and winning strategies that spell success. Many of our courses feature hands-on experiences with real patients, an educational strategy that has proven benefits. All course material has been carefully selected to facilitate practical application of proven, workable theory.

All curriculum components are designed to put the hygienist and other support personnel first or at least on equal footing with the dentist, providing invaluable information related to the practice grand design and its respective components. Ultimately, this inverted design provides a mechanism for improving every practice dynamic from its foundation—a trickle-up effect that is arguably better for the patients, better for the team, and better for the practice as a whole. A graphic representation roughly illustrates our unique approach:

This reversed emphasis has the potential to redefine the way team members view their own work, the responsibilities and function of other team members, and the all important "grand design" in which all functions and responsibilities coalesce in an environment that promotes maximum cooperation, integration, and coordination. What transpires here is continuing education that underscores the importance of how individual parts create a synergistic whole.

To begin with, the design takes the concept of teamwork to new heights. Because it addresses not only the respective responsibilities of individuals but how these responsibilities relate to and interface with the respective responsibilities of others, it has the potential of transforming the practice where everyone is playing "my way" into a practice with efficient and effective standard operating procedures that ensure productivity and profitability in each department. It provides the building blocks that allow everyone to build a practice that functions as a unit. It promotes an attitudinal shift from a focus on "me" to a focus on "us." Implementing such a design is a strategy that cannot fail to improve the oral health of patients in a practice and the financial health of the practice.

Because it invites all team members to recognize their untapped potential and to recognize the value of their respective job functions within the practice, this alternative design fosters confidence, focus, motivation, and innovation. It encourages direct participation in a practice and discourages complacency and passivity. It rekindles professional passion and smothers any inclination to view any other practice department or position as inferior or unimportant. This is not to imply that ego is something to be obliterated. The bottom line here is that ego is channeled and directed away from self-centered to practice-centered aspirations, an invitation to new adventures.

In pursuing continuing education from this angle, team members become members of a different kind of team. Individual competence is transformed and redefined. As each member of the team develops an understanding of the economics of dentistry, he or she becomes an active and knowledgeable partner in marketing, enhancing practice image, and improving case acceptance and patient retention. Everyone works towards measurable goals that include integrating restorative and preventive dentistry, integrating clinical dentistry with the business of dentistry, and integrating front office excellence with operatory excellence.

To date, very few continuing education enterprises have offered a curriculum of this nature. While acknowledging and applauding the excellent work of those that have attempted or succeeded in establishing programs that accomplish the goals outlined above, we must simultaneously recognize that there are simply not enough of them to go around. For many dental teams, they are geographically and financially out of reach. The Chesapeake Institute is an affordable and excellent alternative, one that complements existing continuing education educational programs by providing a distinct and innovative mode of learning.

We are proud to invite dentists and their teams to join us in this exceptional educational endeavor. Please visit our web site at www.chesapeakeinstitute.com, or call Cindy McKane-Wagester at 800-341-1244