East Berlin Smiles Kid's Day

Restore Access Openings - Cleanly and Quickly!

You asked for more handy chair-side tips so I'm giving you one of my favorites.  I was going to make my millions and somehow patent this technique, but I decided to be unselfish and share this with everyone. :)

This may seem very simple and silly but it streamlines the process and helps save time.  This picture shows red wax formed into the shape of a cone and placed securely onto the end of a PFI. The material is in the perfect shape to fill an access opening of an implant or as a temporary restoration for a root canal treated tooth, sedative filling, or palliative treatment. You can use any material that is appropriate for your situation such as a composite material like Systemp or a temporary filling material like Cavit. 

Support Our Future Dental Assistants

Over the last two years, our dental office has had the privilege of working with various dental assisting schools in our area. Most of the programs require their students to extern in our office for about six weeks. This has given us the opportunity to help them become "seasoned" dental assistants before they apply for their first dental assisting position. 

Most of the students come to our office very intimidated by the dentist and are unsure of their abilities as assistants. Most of them have only learned about procedures in a classroom setting and worked on fellow students or typodonts. Many of you probably remember how you felt as a new assistant and how scary that first day was! Most of us would have loved to have had a competent assistant work side by side with us to "work out the kinks" and nerves before finding a job. 

Accepting dental assisting students into your office is a great way to help these future assistants see how a "real" dental office functions, interact with staff members and patients, understand the importance of infection control/procedures/materials/charting/lab work etc., prepare them for job interviews and what they should look for in a potential office.

Dental Assisting Divas and Jackie

Here are some photos of our last extern-Jackie and the fun we had with her in our office. She had a great sense of humor and made it through our "hazing process". We loved her so much we hated to see her go and wish her the best in her career.

  

We Are Back!

Maxine Clare Pierce

It has been a crazy couple months since our last post. Amber had her first baby in January, our doctor had an serious, unexpected illness in March and Gina had surgery in July. Things have been very hectic around here and we have not had the time to blog. Everything is back to normal now and WE ARE BACK and ready to share more dental assisting tips and fun things going on in our office. So keep following us on Facebook for new posts! We also want to hear from you- so please give us your feedback we look forward to hearing from you!

Divas Take on Las Vegas

We just returned from a team building trip to Las Vegas. Here is a run down of our activities.......

Wednesday, November 9th-We touched down in Las Vegas and headed to our hotel, Planet Hollywood-right in the center of the strip.

Thursday, November 10th-"Movie Stars for the Day"

Off to New Patients Inc. to film video clips for our website. They rolled out the red carpet for us

with a spread of refreshments and a make-up artist to "glam us up" for the shoot. After many out takes and bloopers we finished filming with very professional results. NPI will do the editing and we will soon be able to view the finished product!

  

That evening we celebrated by going to dinner and the "O" Cirque du Soleil show at the beautiful Bellagio Hotel. The show was amazing and was one of the highlights of our trip.

November 11th & 12th-Madow Brother's TBSE("the best seminar ever")

Friday and Saturday we attended a fun, practice management, team building and inspirational seminar at Planet Hollywood. The Madow's encourage you to "dress up" in crazy attire, so we wore our Dental Diva shirts and pink boa's!

Saturday evening was our final night in Vegas so we walked the strip, toured some hotels and had dinner. Sunday morning we left for home all pumped up as a team and ready to implement all the good tips we received. It was so nice to get out of the office and re-energize ourselves so we could come home and give our best to our patients and one another. We are so thankful to have such a great doctor to work for who truly appreciates her team and includes us in these fun outings.

Is it time to "up the team morale" at your office?

Morale is defined as "the state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks." Whether you would define your team as having good morale or bad, is up to you. 

We recently had a great staff meeting with our Paragon Program consultant, Hope.  The Paragon Program just celebrated 25 years of dental consulting as one of "America's Profitability Experts."  Every other month we meet with our consultant to discuss our numbers to ensure we're on track to meeting our financial goals for the year. 

After discussing our goals, our consultant suggested that we participate in a team-building exercise that we found to be very beneficial and boosted everyone's self-confidence.  She asked us a series of questions and each of us wrote our own responses on a piece of paper. After everyone was finished writing their lists, we took turns reading them aloud.  

These were the questions:
* What are the top 10 things that you would tell your patients about the doctor that you  work for?
*What are the top 10 things that you would tell your patients about the team member seated to your right?
*What are the top 10 things about your team/office that make you awesome?

This exercise can benefit any team and bring you closer together.  We work with each other on a daily basis, and some may even say we spend more time with each other more than we do with our own spouses!  I hope we never take each other for granted.  It's important to verbalize the importance and significance of each team member.  Most of us don't go around announcing to the world why we're wonderful.  But team members need to hear it from your doctor as well as each other.  Your doctor needs to hear why you appreciate them, and your patients need to hear great things about everyone.  Brag each other up!  It's important to enjoy your time spent at work and those you work with. 

Some of you may be thinking that, "She has no clue - I could never get along with the people I work with."  And it very well may be true that there may be a specific team member(s) that you find it difficult to get along with.  So what?  We've all been there at one time or another - why are you letting that spoil your team's positive morale? Why are we expecting that person to change when we are the one's who can change our own attitudes and actions towards that person to produce a positive outcome?   It's a proven fact that laughter and cheerfulness are contagious.  If you start making the changes your team needs to "up the morale,"  you may just find that others will follow closely behind.  

 

Exciting Announcements!!!

Wow, have we been busy!  Time flies when you're having fun.  Amber and I have been working with several extern dental assisting students from local schools, and time has gotten away from us. 

In case any of you were wondering, YES, I passed my state board exam and have been licensed as an EFDA (expanded functions dental assistant) for the past few months.  I love being a dental assistant and being an EFDA allows me to love my job even more by having more responsibilities.  I owe a huge "Thank You" to Dr. Cockley for allowing me to continue my education and for placing her confidence in me. 

  

Our other EFDA, Amber, is also very excited to announce that she's going to me a "Mommy" for the first time!  She will be having a beautiful baby girl early next year. Do I even need to mention that we're all very excited for her?  Our closely-knit office of eight women will spoil her rotten.  Congratulations Amber!     

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day things that we do at work, but I encourage you to find something to get excited about!  What's going on in your office that's special right now?  If you can't think of anything - maybe you should be the one to start the excitement.  Bring in a home-made treat to share, an inspirational article, or maybe it's something as simple as writing a note to your team members letting them know why you appreciate them.  Don't forget to let your patients in on the fun and share your excitement.