Health & Fitness:Medicine
Pursuit of Clinical Excellence, Anxiety and Social Media – IC053
2024-09-25
“Defensive Dentistry and the fear culture is the number 1 cause of anxiety amongst Dentists”
How can we instead foster a culture where we can focus on growth and supporting each other?
Does Dentistry have a social media problem?
Watch IC053 on YoutubeJoin us on this episode with Dr Mehy Lo-Presti as we navigate dentistry and social media, the pros and cons of using the online world as part of our portfolio and how we can remove anxiety through effective communication.
2 Events to Attend:
DentoRama 18th October
Treatment Planning Symposium (Hybrid Event) 16th Nov
Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!
Highlights of this Episode:
02:05 Introduction – Dr Mehy Lo-Presti
06:42 Mehy Early On
12:04 Dento-Rama
15:30 Social Media in Dentistry
20:35 Life Before Social Media
21:25 Social Media is a Business
23:40 What Causes Anxiety for Dentists?
29:45 Overcoming the Fear Factor
34:45 Fast Tracking to Success
41:20 Wrapping Up
47:14 Booking the Event and Getting in Touch
This episode is eligible for 0.75 CE credit via the quiz on Protrusive Guidance.
GDC LEARNING OUTCOMES: A
AGD Code 770 (Self Improvement)
Dentists will be able to:
- Gain insights into how social media affects clinical practice, patient perceptions, and professional image, learning how to use these platforms responsibly.
- Manage the pressures of online validation, minimising the impact on their mental health and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
- Develop stronger communication methods both online and offline, ensuring clearer patient education, reducing complaints, and fostering better relationships within the dental team.
For the full educational experience, our Ultimate Education Plan gives you access to all our courses, webinars, and exclusive monthly content. This includes videos on Overlay preps and the famous ‘Vertipreps for Plonkers’ series.
If you liked this episode, check out IC035 – Best Practices in Social Media for Dentists
Click below for full episode transcript:Teaser:
I don’t believe in fast tracks. I don’t believe in that things can go very quick because you’re going to miss a lot of learning in the process. So I think exploring and making mistakes and allowing yourself to fail. It’s something that. It will make you grow way faster. People are happy in their jobs when they feel that they are treated as adults.
And this is something I learned from the employees from Google and Netflix and all these super fancy offices. They understood that people don’t care if you give them free food, they have a gym, you have cinema, you have all this super cool things in their office. So if you don’t treat them as adults and you don’t give them this freedom, they won’t be happy.
Jaz’s Introduction:
What’s the number one thing holding you back as a clinician? What’s holding you back from growing as a dentist and actually sleeping well at night time? It is an F word. Me and my guest today, Dr. Mehy Lo-Presti, we believe that fear is holding us back. When all of our decision making and all of our judgments and our communications are processed through this filter of fear and our dentistry is fear driven and therefore defensive. This is what may thought was the number one contributor of anxiety for dentists.
Hello, Protruserati, I’m Jaz Gulati, and welcome back to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. This is an interference cast, where we discuss more of the non clinical themes, which are super important, because we touch on communication, we touch on fulfillment, and we also touch on social media, because we can’t avoid it. Is there a place on social media for us all? Should we all be on there? And how do we conduct ourselves on social media? And how do we avoid the negative stuff on social media? I. e. the anxiety that social media itself actually brings.
This episode is still eligible for CPD or CE credits. There is one CE credit or one hour of enhanced CPD, and the AGD code for this one is 770. That’s self improvement. And I truly think if you make it to the end of this podcast, you will feel so uplifted.
You will appreciate that the themes we discuss on this episode are so real, so current, and they’re the kind of things that just need to be discussed more in dentistry. Two events that I recommend on the back of this podcast is October 18th Dentorama by the Global Dental Collective. This is like a combination of theatre, comedy and dental debate for the entire dental team.
That’s in London and also in London on 16th of November is the Treatment Planning Symposium. This is where Lincoln Harris and Dr. Michael Frazis will be coming from Australia to London and I’ll be joining them as well to talk all about failure and then Lincoln will take over with a treatment planning masterclass.
We’ve got a live patient consultation plan, like an unseen case for Linc, as well as asking the sauciest and the hottest questions on the live panel debate. For both those events, I’ll put the link in the show notes. Now let’s join the main podcast and I’ll catch you in the outro.
Main Episode
Dr. Mehy Lo-Presti, welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. I’ve been following you for a while. I don’t know if you remember the first time I actually met you, right? Was that, it was a Pascal Magne. I think it was in Glasgow. I think, right. It was a BACD and then you were there with extra Rupert Munkhouse, right? And I was like interviewing you, right? And then that’s when I first got exposed to you.
And then I didn’t realize you were just like mega superstar. Then I see you on the stage. You’re like, gosh, I don’t want to say Jerry Springer, but like the male Oprah Winfrey, you’re just like completely ruling it. And now here we are recording today. So for those who don’t know about you, Mehy tell us about yourself.
[Mehy]
Wow. Wow. That’s, what an intro actually, no, the expectations are very high, maybe not as funny, but yeah, I can manage an audience.
[Jaz]
Edinburgh.
[Mehy]
Well, yeah, that’s true. We met in Edinburgh, right? It was at the BACD and then you were recording and interviewing people and then I already was following you because I think you have one of the best educating content in the dental world.
So the pleasure is mine. Well, I’m a dentist. I was born and raised in Spain. I practice in London now. And basically I got to the point where dentistry was a struggle for me. I got a lot of people around here and I found healthcare events very boring in general. So I needed to find a way to make them more fun.
I needed to find a way to also talk about everything that goes around dentistry that can help us to have a happier-
[Jaz]
What aspect of it did you struggle with most? So the common ones we hear is, just like the clinical, the big step that we have from dental school to real world, that’s a huge knowledge gap, right? And then you realize actually, in dental school, you really barely scratched the surface, right? And which is very disheartening to all our young listeners. I know, but that’s the real world. And, or was it the managing expectations of patients or was it just transition to adulting? What aspect of it did you find trickiest?
[Mehy]
I think what creates a stress in ourselves, it’s the not knowing what is going to happen. I’m not having a hundred percent control of what is going to happen in any scenario, right? And in dentistry, especially in the first years. This is very common. You don’t know how well your treatment is going to go because you’re not as good. You don’t know how the patient will react. You don’t manage your team that well. You take your work to home. So it’s a never-
[Jaz]
You own the patient’s problems, which is something I talk about. You end up owning the patient’s problems. A lot of young dentists, people still do it all throughout their career. But that for me was very peak when I was a newly qualified, this patient had this really tough decision to make between a root canal and extraction. And I felt it was me having to make a decision. I take that home with me, maybe in my stomach in bed, even like a minor thing like that, or a patient has a dry socket and it’s almost as though you had the dry socket.
And this is a sign of a caring practitioner, so anyone’s resonating with this, it’s kind of a good thing that you have that compass inside you and you are sympathetic, you’re empathetic. But we must learn to detach ourselves and be there to guide the patient in their journey, but not to own their problems.
[Mehy]
A hundred percent. And not having those tools to do so was basically what took me to have the decision to make the decision to like, okay, maybe this is not for me. And especially after COVID, like COVID and going back in those conditions that we went, having all this stress that what you already have, it wasn’t great.
And then I realized that I needed help. I spoke with colleagues that had the same issues. I did some courses I started working on myself. I left that black hole, I would say. And then I go, okay, we need to speak about this. And when we did this, our first event, which was almost three years ago, there was not many people talking about mental health in dentistry, probably where the first event, actually, we were just bringing this onto the table.
And it was amazing to realize that actually the whole industry was having the same issues. And then figures came out and then you realize that, wow, actually. I’m happy in this profession, so there’s must be something that we need to do.
[Jaz]
Tell us a bit about you now in your working situation. What are the kind of, what does Mehy like to practice? What kind of a dentist are you? What do you love most about dentistry? What do you hate most about dentistry? Tell me about you as a dentist who kind of took this break or a pause. But then now you are re reengaged in it, but you also have this second purpose, right?
We all have this purpose dentistry, but I love your second purpose of actually creating community similar to me in a way, create a community. You’re making it a safe place for everyone to talk about these issues and you’re bettering everyone’s mental health in my view, as I see it, but you do far more than that. So tell us more about the yin and the yang, this mix of two things that you do, the clinical and the nonclinical.
[Mehy]
Well, the clinical, I’m enjoying a lot of my work right now, but I started not knowing what to do. Like I was not even sure I wanted to do dentistry and I’m from a background of doctors. So it was probably the safe bet in my case.
[Jaz]
You’re the black sheep. You’re the failure.
[Mehy]
Exactly. And I always say like, my dad is Palestinian. So we have three options. We need a doctor, lawyer or a failure. And I was clearly, I remember telling my dad, I wanted to do fashion illustration. And it was like, no, we don’t do fashion illustration. I mean, first he said, I don’t even know what’s that, but we don’t do that. So you can probably be a dentist. Might be easier than being a doctor.
[Jaz]
You use the F word basically. That in a way is also an F word.
[Mehy]
I mean, yeah, I knew exactly that was like, Oh my God, what I’ve done to reserve that. But anyway, so I finished my career and I didn’t really know which specialty I liked and I didn’t know much about, I wasn’t exposed to much about to all these different options. So I started doing perio, a full year periodontist, then I saw that, okay, maybe blood and soft tissues is not what I wanted.
[Jaz]
Let me pause you there, mate. Let me understand this. Did you do a four year perio program? You did a program, a full perio program?
[Mehy]
Yeah, it was like a pre, so to get into the masters in Spain, it was a three years master. It was one of the hardest perio programs in the world, which is directed by Mariano Sanz, that he trained people like Miguel Stanley and the biggest people in the world.
So to go that, you need to do a one year of pre perio. You need to become an expert to actually go in there. So I started studying for that course. I started shadowing some of the best perios in Spain, which are, there are a lot like Mariano, all these big guys. And then I realized I don’t feel like leaving. Put in my life three years in the beam to do patio, maybe to do something else.
And then I started working in a place where root canals, they were a must, like there was a lot of, for some reason there was a lot of root canals needed, the demographic for the work that was done before, for the kind of treat patients that we were receiving. But then I think I did like maybe 150 root canals in a year.
And my family in the states are endodontists in LA. Several clinics after and also I was always under I understood the work, but again, I found it extremely I was like, I can’t do this the rest of my life I mean no way. Probably no and now I regret to be honest now seeing them in the longest. I probably now would love to be in and around this. I found it like very profession to do right so young dentists, endodontists it sounds like it’s not sexy. But it has a very good life.
I don’t know if you agree with me on that I finally agree good speciality to know that I decided to move to London to do my Master’s in the Aesthetic and Restorative Program. And that was a part time, so I needed to find a job here while I was doing my Master’s. That was a bit difficult because I didn’t know how the NHS worked.
I didn’t have any I had no clue about how the system worked and I was lucky enough to end up working in a clinic in West Palm Grove in Nottingham. Super cool clinic. The guy liked the work that I was doing and like he was also Spanish that helped. And that gave me already open doors to private dentistry.
So I’ve never done NHS. And I could pay my university at the same time. So I was very lucky. And from there, basically restorative slash prosthodontist, which in your case not very well defined. What I do in getting more and more and more and more complex cases, and now what I love to do is basically work occlusion, full mouth rehabilitation dentistry, whatever involves patients to have a normal life.
Again, as much as we can and always looking from a very holistic approach. So working with nutritionists, working with chiropractors, I work a lot in getting a lot in sleep medicine, something that I’m very passionate about. This is the kind of patients that I get. They work in Kensington, they work in a clinic in Archery. So our patients that normally they need a lot of help and we try to help them from the very, very beginning of their problems, which are, gets to manage dentitions, right?
[Jaz]
Well, when you started to re engage back in dentistry, and take this further, and now you’re working in a clinic where you have the right tools and the right mindset that’s constantly growing, you’re delving more into sleep medicine, for example, when you realize that actually it wasn’t just you who went through that rough path, that we all go through it, and there’s still many clinicians who are suffering in silence, how we can be a very isolated, went into creating a little bit more about these events.
Tell me more about that, tell me about did Dentorama come first, or which one came first? Give us a flavor about that because the next thing I want to jump to is came to your most recent one. It was just amazing. Like, the full stage all around the debate that was happening. The conversations that were happening, the kind of people that you tracked was truly brilliant.
So tell us more about how you ended up going into that, or we talk about some of the themes that came such as anxiety from social media. Is it a good thing and a bad thing? But tell us more about how you actually got started with that.
[Mehy]
Well, this was, it’s going to be now almost three years ago and two or three years ago. And I had a concept of an event. Me with my friend Bruno, we wanted, who is not in dentistry, he’s in music, now he does sound frequency, which it’s another science, but we wanted to basically create events to help the healthcare provider, what to, how they can work on their breathing, how they can work on their posture, how they can work on their mental health, everything that is around the clinical side.
I had that in mind the way that I wanted to look, which is one of the ventures, which is the debate on this very dark room with a white in the middle that is pointed to the speakers and makes a bit very mystic atmosphere. We, our paths cross with Joe Lovett, one of the most well connected networker in the industry, and he also had in mind to do an event.
So we kind of merge forces. He was bringing basically companies and huge following that he had. And I didn’t know anyone here, so I guess like, this is my idea. Let’s see if it works. So the ingredients worked very well. People loved it. People felt safe. People love to have a space where they could actually open up to their feelings and not being judged.
Everything in a very cool set up, like you’ve never seen before. And after that, we were throwing a party with an open bar, which everyone loves. So all these ingredients made it very magical and successful. And people were like, okay, what’s next? And we’re like, I don’t know. We didn’t think to do anyone else.
It’s like, yeah, yeah. We need to continue that. We did another one, but the problem that we have is that every time we do an event, we need to change something and we need to make it more innovative and people are expecting from us. It’s like, oh, let’s see what’s next. At some point, the idea of creating a theatrical debate came on board, which basically is something that happened in Morinther and arts, which is basically a very, very basic concept of what we do now.
We had to transform it in what is then drama now, which is theater with the real actors that play real life scenarios that happen in a dental clinic. And last year was a lot about problems of the patient with the dentist expectations and unhappy patients. And the dentist trying to commit frauds to make some extra money.
The insurance theater at some point freeze or stops. And we had a panel of experts last year. We have a lawyer, one of the directors of dental protection, actually deserves to learn this. And we talk about what happened in the theater, but the coolest bit, and I think it’s the one that people like more is that for a hundred people that are in the room, they can share and open and talk about what they’ve seen.
So it’s like a little bit like a forum, but not only to see who is speaking. Also, you have the chance to express yourself. And obviously we think we finish all of this with a very nice network, a very nice party. So, everyone goes home happy. But so this is how everything evolved. And with the years we managed to build this very beautiful community. People that want to have a better career and they are concerned about creating a better work through dentistry.
[Jaz]
I think it’s very innovative what you did. I think it’s very timely and I think it’s just an artistic expression. These debates are happening, but what you’ve essentially created, you’ve funneled it into a very creative way. Beautiful artistic expression. So it was really great to be involved with the debate that you had, but now looking forward to in October, the Dentorama. I love the theater. I love the production. So I can’t wait to see what surprises you have up your sleeves. But one of the themes that you did discuss the most recent event with the debate, I think Rona was an audience and you asked her about social media and you don’t have to have the kind of following that she does.
It could be anyone. The thing I found to struggle with was many years ago when social media was new. To actually have the confidence to post a photo of a clinical image. That’s a big step for a young dentist to do that basically. But the other thing I realized is that a lot of dentists just don’t want to engage in that and you have to respect that.
But then the question I’m asking is in this time that we are now, 2024, is it a must? Should every dentist have a presence on social media, whether they like it or not? It’s kind of like, should we all have a LinkedIn? Should we all have an Instagram? How imperative is it to have a social media? Because one of the downsides of social media, which we’ll touch on is the anxiety.
It creates, you’re constantly seeing beautiful work. You’re constantly seeing, it’s no different to seeing all these beautiful fashion magazines and seeing these models, which are not realistic. Some have been Photoshop, et cetera. People start comparing, having anxiety about that. We apply that to dentistry. We see that through social media as well. So what are your thoughts on the dentist and their role, their presence in social media and the whole package that comes with it?
[Mehy]
I think it depends. It depends on what you want to be in this profession, and who is the audience that you want to talk to? It depends on your audience is in between 25 and 35, then probably you need Instagram, right? Or-
[Jaz]
By audience. Do you mean your patient base? Is that the way of saying your patient base?
[Mehy]
Yeah, let’s say, okay. Yeah. I mean, kind of both at the same time, it depends on, first of all, do you want to use it professionally? Do you want it to attract patients or do you want it to educate? Do you want to use it to just know about your friends or it depends on, I think the question is what do you want to be in social media? Because right now in social media we are actors and this is how I see. No one really shows. I haven’t met anyone that shows the real life every day. So right now in social media we are actors.
[Jaz]
I love that and I love where you’re going with this, but I’m going to add that actually It’s not just social media. I feel like when we are in the operatory, we are also actors. We are also putting on a performance.
[Mehy]
A hundred percent. And this is what you need to decide. I need to decide when I’m in front, in the stage, when I’m doing public speaking, when I’m in front of a camera, I need to decide, okay, who are you right now and what you want to express. So if I want to empower my audience and I want to speak about things that they’re going to make my audience happier.
Of course, I’m not going to show who I am today. Because that might not help them and the reality of who I am. So it depends on which actor are you deciding to be in social media. And you can be many actors, but this is what you need to understand. That when you know this, you understand that whoever is in social media is not you.
Then you can use it as you wish. And that probably will remove a lot of the anxiety that this is creating. Because one of the things that you said about that first post about your case, how difficult it is. This is because we are seeking validation. And this is a trauma that we’re having since we were kids.
So this is not a problem. Social media is our problem that actually social media is bringing up. You have a problem because you need to be liked by everyone. And you need to, everyone said, wow, what a great job. And you won’t accept criticism. So when you worked on that, and then you were actually like, I’m ready to learn from my mistakes and I’m ready to show and see what they’ve done wrong, then that anxiety will probably disappear.
Another thing is that if you really want to show that, and if you really want to show your weaknesses, that it’s not always necessary, like it depends on, it depends again, what you want to show, who you want to be in social media. So I always have this debate. I’ll ask this many times in my events.
Is it okay to share your personal life and your professional life at the same time? And some people will say, yes. And, but there are consequences of that. And the consequences is that, as I know, a lot of my colleagues, they had such a strong presence in social media and they show so much about their life that the patient, they go to the clinic to meet them.
They almost don’t care about their clinical skills. They want to know and now I’m a big fan of you and okay, whatever you do, I’m going to from being a great dentist or bring a clinician that we think that that people will go to you depends on what you’re showing and they’re like amazing clinicians that we all know very well that they only show their clinical work and you almost don’t even know their face. I actually, they’re clinicians. I don’t even know how they look. They only show teeth.
[Jaz]
But you know, that style of dental photography. And when you see the photo, you don’t have to see the handle, whose photo that is and the work and it’s like a signature that you leave on your dentistry. And they’re showing that, and they’re obviously very passionate because one way you could be the absolute best dentist in the world, right? But if you can’t communicate with your patient, right, that goes nowhere.
In the same way, you could be an exemplary clinician. But your colleagues will not refer to you because you haven’t communicated it to your colleagues and you haven’t communicated to your patients in the modern way that we do now in this day and age.
[Mehy]
Yeah, I agree. And back in the days, I was actually talking with a very, very, very brilliant orthodontist, Dr. David Young, which has 30 years of experience. And actually, I was asking him, how were you doing before? And like, how were you when, before social media, before internet, and he was actually talking to me about the slide projector where you had to take all your pictures and take it to reveal.
And then they were creating this slides for you. And then you had to take. It was almost like a DJ that goes with the vinyls around. So you had to go and this is the only way you could show all your work. And then how many people could see your work was whether it was in the room. And if you were lucky, maybe a thousand people that normally it’s 10 to 10 study clubs. So social media is a great tool on that.
[Jaz]
It’s a great megaphone. It’s a great amplifier, but we need to make sure two things, which message I’ll be giving to the world. But also which message are we receiving as well, because we are at the mercy of the algorithms and we start looking at things and the algorithm wants to feed you more, but then you get blind to the other perspectives that are out there.
[Mehy]
100%. Social media is a business, right? And as a business, there are interests. And I mean, I had my personal experience where I, at some point I was showing or trying to raise awareness about the political issue, right. Or about some kind of a war or I’m Palestinian, right. So I wanted to raise awareness about what was happening in the world.
And my view, my posts were shown. I don’t have a huge following. I don’t know how many thousands, something they were shown to 10 people. Now, when I was posting about my holidays in Ibiza with a beer in my hand and with my daughter or whatever, there are 400 views. So there’s clearly an indication of what you can show as a filtering.
So, and that is in any sense in any case, and so you have also to consider that you are part of a business and you’re going to be showing whatever the business wants you to show. So as far as you understand how it works and as far as understand what is social media and as far as you understand yourself, what you want to be on those platforms and who you want to talk, how you are going to receive, as you said, those messages, then you can be safe. But again, it creates addiction. It creates an anxiety. There’s a very dangerous tool to use, in my opinion.
[Jaz]
I think it’s good that you mentioned, and it’s the first point you mentioned. I think just, if anyone’s multitasking and missed that, really important to say is that Mehy clearly said that social media is fake and just always remember that.
And then this is how it is, is that it always will be. Because no one’s going to show the new wart that came on their pinky toe, right? No one’s going to share that stuff. Okay. So that’s too real. When they get their nails done, they’ll show that. So just remember that the warts and all the experience is very rarely happening.
And what you see is the best of the best. So never feel anxiety or compare yourself to what you see on social media. The best metric is to compare yourself from two years ago, compare yourself to you three years ago. And if you’re not happy with that progress, you need to really have a sit down and think about, okay, what’s the next two years going to look like? What’s the next six months going to look like?
Now on the topic of all this, it may may or may not be social media. I’m leaving it to you because what I see you are really on the field discussing this a lot, right? What do you think is the number one source of anxiety for young dentists? So it could be social media, but I don’t know. I’m not convinced it is. I feel as though it’s other things, but you may say it is from speaking to his colleagues. What is the biggest source of anxiety?
[Mehy]
I don’t think I mean, social media is a huge factor, but something, I mean just imagine that once you’re taking your driving license, right? And then the teacher is telling you, once you’re going to get your license, and like, by the way, I didn’t tell you that, but you’re going to crash your car at least twice in your life and you might die. This might affect the rest of your life in the way you drive. And it’s going to make you drive very insecure, very scared.
You’re expecting always something going to happen. So there’s something that shocked me a lot when I arrived to this country is that the indemnity companies, they assure to the young professionals that they are going to get sued. At least twice in their career.
[Jaz]
That must have changed Mehy. That must have changed because the one I heard many years ago, but that the most latest one I heard is that not necessarily sued, but you will get five complaints in your first two years.
Now, what determines the complaint? It could just be like a small thing. But some of these complaints go on further. So, in the UK, as you mentioned, it’s country specific UK, at some point did overtake the States, did overtake other countries in terms of being the most litigious country in the world, and I love your analogy of the driving instructor telling you that you’re going to crash.
And then your whole life you’re driving with anxiety, you are holding your hand piece of anxiety. When you’re speaking to your patient, you are filtering so many things you are then getting confused because there’s one thing you want to say. But you can’t say it because you are then scared to do something that may be in the best interest of the patient, but it may be a riskier approach. It may leave you to defensive dentistry. You’re practicing defensively.
[Mehy]
Exactly. And I don’t think this is fair. One thing is okay. You need to understand there are rules. There are things that you need to be careful with, but I practice dentistry in five different countries. Studying to and have people in probably around 10 and no, this doesn’t happen everywhere.
People in Spain don’t practice dentistry and there is great dentistry in Spain and there are some of the best in the world. So you don’t have that fear because you know you’re doing the best for the patient and you’re not worried that that patient will sue you. It might happen. I don’t know about you.
Don’t go with this mentality. You just do the best of what your abilities and what you think is best for the patient. And you start actually what happens with this. So starting taking on board more complicated cases in an early stage of your career and you stop practicing this very defensive dentistry, which at the end of the day is wrong.
And this is form in my opinion, like there’s a lot of, I call it like half way dentistry here, like a half of orthodontic treatment, just move a little bit to being able to put two millimeters of composite bonding. This is not dentistry. This is dentistry for three years, four years, but we all know this is going to break and doing this twice.
This is the wrong thing. And this is why, and a lot of people don’t do that because they don’t want to put their patients through a more aggressive and I don’t think it’s more aggressive, but a longer treatment, more aggressive, more expensive, which can bring more complaints and complicate your life.
But the reality is that is your duty to at least go for that treatment and if the patient doesn’t want to maybe go for something simpler, but I feel that this is what caused a lot of anxiety on the people like going to their jobs, thinking that something is going to go wrong, that whatever they do, they might get a complaint that if they forget to write the expiry of their anesthesia.
They might get sued forever. And as you said, the complaints that you might receive, also, I did a study with the general dental counsel and we brought people from the GDC to one of our events, the numbers are not that bad. And the people that actually they get to lose their license is people that they are almost criminals.
Like actually they’ve done some stuff very, very wrong, but you don’t lose your license because you forgot to write something on the notes or because it’s as far as you’re honest and then you made the best out of your capacity and things don’t need to go that bad.
[Jaz]
I’ll give you an example, right? And I love this direction we’re going in. I think you hit the nail on the head. In the UK, but I do feel speaking to us colleagues, they have a bit of this fear as well.
[Mehy]
Also the US, yes, for sure. Even worse.
[Jaz]
And the overarching theme, I think is when you are doing something with fear, if your frame is fear, then what happens is that you are not able to grow a good rate. You’re not able to innovate for sure. You’re not able to grow. And innovation doesn’t mean you make the next big thing in dentistry, it’s innovation for you, where you are at in your career, doing new procedures that already well documented in the textbooks, but now you’re able to confidently do that.
Now, when I look at other countries, India, Poland, and some Eastern European countries, and I see how young dentists are doing such great work, it’s because yes, they had the mentorship and the guidance but they didn’t have that fear factor overlying, someone sitting, weighing them down in the shoulder.
It’s a bit like the clinical example I can give is a sodium hypochlorite extrusion, right? It could happen, right? It’s not that no dentist ever wants to do that or create that because it’s horrible. No one wants to see it, right? But then now, how many more dentists are referring because they’re just afraid of all the different complications that can happen in endo?
They’re not doing the molar root canal. They’re not, skilling up in endo, right? And so that’s a great example because that’s something that’s just happens as a percentage chance that that can happen. Even ID blocks, people, dentists, young kids are scared of doing ID blocks, right?
Because they are afraid of causing a temporary or permanent, very rarely paresthesia from an ID block. And you’re such a simple, basic thing and you’re approaching it from fear. So if you can’t get past the ID block, how are you going to do your first ridge preservation? How are you going to do your first implant if you can’t get past the ID block?
And so that’s the big issue I think we feel. So how can we even begin to correct that? Not that we’re going to come up with the answers me and you now, but I’m just putting up to debate to the Protruserati something to reflect on.
[Mehy]
I think having the tools. And understanding where these comments, where are they coming from? First of all, I think universities are not making a favor because they are the first ones putting that fear and talking about ID blocks. I know that for example, there are some universities that they are forcing you or to use different techniques as not as effective maybe so to avoid complications, which if they’re done, I mean, under some circumstances, they can be good, but the problem is that they teach you everything from the fear.
So, that mentality needs to change. And I think those numbers about the GDC and complaints that you might receive, as you said, when they tell you, you’re going to receive five complaints. In your career now, they’re saying five, right? They don’t tell you exactly. I mean, let’s just stop saying this.
Just let’s start from there. Like what is the reason of you saying this? What is the real reason? So we can increase the rise, the fees of the companies, or asked to practice more conservative. Then they say, what is the reason behind those statement. And this is what I would like to understand where these statements come from.
[Jaz]
Well, let’s talk about this statements language, right? Barry Oulton once taught me a great example, right? It’s a bit like when you’re speaking to your child, right? You’re speaking to a child. Like if I speak to my five year old Ishaan, this example that he gave me, Ishaan’s got some orange juice in his hand and he’s walking down the stairs, right?
There’s one way of saying to Ishaan. Ishaan, don’t drop the orange juice as you’re coming down. Just be careful. Don’t drop the orange juice. Okay. And so he’s constantly walking, thinking about not dropping the orange juice. Instead, if we say to Ishaan, Ishaan come down very carefully, walk carefully and make it to the end and so that we can enjoy our orange juice.
Okay. So it’s just the way you frame it. So perhaps we need to talk less or emphasize less about the world’s a bad place. Everyone’s going to sue you. Make sure you do this in notes or this will happen, et cetera. And rather think about, okay, how can we connect better with our patients?
How can we get really good consent from our patients? How can we serve our patients better so they are happier? How can we upskill at the correct pace? If we maybe change the language to that, that might be part of the issue or solution.
[Mehy]
100 percent and is actually the main reason of complain. Normally people don’t complain because you’ve done a bad treatment. Normally people complain because you didn’t tell me that they tell him and explaining that things can go wrong. You didn’t manage expectations and you didn’t communicate clearly. And this is where everything comes from, communication. Communication that we receive and mainly the communication that we give.
And this is, I’m very happy to see a lot of forces in communication and a lot of people talking about this because this is very important. And I think it’s the key of success and the key of success in everything, in your relationships, in your work, in your career, everything for me is communication because the really successful people in the world are people that they know how to talk and how to transmit and how to engage and how to make people feel safe.
There are no people that have a lot of knowledge and there’s not a lot of people that they’re very good at doing a technique. They are very good at what they do, but if you really want to have success, which means for me, success is have a happy life and means that I go to bed sleeping very well and waking up, not thinking about problems.
This is for me, success. Then you need to make sure that you spoke to everyone that you had to talk in a clear way the day before and there was no issues of miscommunication. So you need to work very hard on your communication skills. This is what my number one piece of advice to any person and can be young, can be adults wants to improve that.
And once you get to that point where everyone can understand you and you’re not scared of saying what you think, and you said it, say it in the right way, things are going to go easier because skills, you’re going to get them, skills is one after the other.
[Jaz]
I think the soft skills of that conversation, the communication, we don’t practice enough. I had a great guest on recently, Dr. Brett Gilbert, Endodontist in the States. And a great piece of advice he gave is yes, you might practice on extracted teeth with the K files, et cetera, but how often do we stand in front of a mirror and practice how you say something and practice a hundred times the way you say it.
So you become confident in the way you say it. Not because you’re trying to change you as a person, but your delivery is important. The reps that you do in terms of sometimes it’s difficult to say certain things. Sometimes it’s very, some people really struggle to talk about fees. Sometimes dentists really struggle to talk about the risks because they think, oh, if I tell them too many risks, then they won’t want the treatment.
But that’s the whole point of consent. So you’ve got to say, look, Mrs. Smith, this might actually fail in a couple of years. And when it fails, it’s very sad. We don’t want that to happen. We’re going to try our best, but you need to consent that. Okay. It’s not always a hundred percent successful. Is that going to be okay with you?
Now, some people would really struggle with that, but if you can actually practice that in front of the mirror, that’s a good thing. So what leads me to next is, what top tips can you share in the similar vein of the communication to help dentists fast track their growth in their career? And it doesn’t matter which stage of career they’re at basically, but to really from this point today, to fast track and grow at a faster rate.
[Mehy]
I am a huge fan of enjoying exploring your life and your options. So I don’t believe in fast tracks. I don’t believe that things can go very quick because you’re going to miss a lot of learning in the process. So I think exploring and making mistakes and allowing yourself to fail. It’s something that will make you grow way faster in a way. But when everything goes right and is planned and no one, you never had any issues, the learning is super slow.
And actually when you have that failure in a very late stage of your career, that can be very dangerous because you’re not ready to fail. So for me, it’s like accept failure, accept that things can go wrong, accept the learning, something that in the industry, we’re not very good at that, right?
We’re not very good at people telling us, oh, this is not how you should do it. And for me, communication, as I said, is key. So do courses, watch YouTube videos. Understand how to read a room, how to read your patient. No, you can’t talk to everyone in the same way. If you want to do public speaking, you can’t talk in the same way in a room for 2, 000 people than in a room with one person.
You’re not talking in the same way to someone that is very confident. That someone is very scared. So once you understand, you can bridge people’s behavior. You need to understand how they feel. And also that goes to your team, which is exactly the same. When you learn how to talk to your team, how to give feedback, how to receive it.
It’s very important, how to tell someone, hey, I don’t like this. Which for me was a huge struggle for years. I spent three years of my career not being able to tell to my nurse. I don’t like when you put this action here. And I was scared and afraid of hearing, hurting her feelings. And that was causing me anxiety.
[Jaz]
Especially young female dentists. They seem to complain about a lot. I hear a lot that get friction with the nurses. There’s so much more to it, I imagine, but we hear this a lot. And so well, one way I approach this, and when I work with a new nurse, right, I work with a wonderful nurse called Zoe, pretty much night and time.
We have a great relationship. We worked on it because one of the first things I do when I work with a new nurse, right, is when the patient’s gone, maybe I said to Zoe many years ago, I said, Zoe, I like to work in a way where if anything that I do annoys you, please tell me. And then you’d be amazed what they tell you.
Like one nurse once told me that my light is way too bright. It hurts her eyes. I never knew this. So I gave her permission to tell me. But equally what I did, I sought permission from my nurses. Like, can I please have your permission to maybe just share a few things that, I would like tweaked.
And then maybe together we can get a win win. And then they say yes. And then when you open up that permission, that’s a wonderful thing. So maybe asking permission is a great example. The other thing I just want to just add on based on what a wonderful thing you said about reading people. There’s a great book.
I’ll find it. I’ll put in the show notes. I think it’s called the power of body language or something to do with body language, right? One of the first books I read when I started looking into communication and that book helped me so much because 70 percent of our communication is a non-verbal. You know, the other week I walked in to work 7. 30 a. m.
And I just said, good morning. I’m not going to say her name when the receptionist and said good morning. And the way she said it to me and the way she looked, I said, what’s wrong? And she just burst into tears, right? And then there was something and then the other receptionist there to help her.
And I just knew if I just said, okay, good morning. Yeah. How you okay? Or I just walked upstairs. But I knew something was wrong just from the way she said it and her body language, her posture. And that is a powerful thing because our patients will give us these cues. Our colleagues will give us our cues.
And I agree, not just the verbal communication, not what to say to the patient, how to say it, but how to read it.
[Mehy]
Agreed. And just say it. Try to find a way to say, because if you don’t say that your colleagues or patients, anyone around you, your partner, they don’t need to guess it. And so yesterday, I was actually shared this in social media because I found it very, very funny, but it’s actually something that I go through every day when you actually look at your nurse with the eyes. You’re expecting her to know exactly what you want. And we don’t really, a lot of the time-
[Jaz]
Telepathy.
[Mehy]
Expect people to do telepathy. We expect from people to do things that we never, ever told them to do. And you would think that you say it every day, but I assure you, there are things that you never, ever told them or ask them to do. And you’re expecting for them to do, and sometimes you go back to that, something you’re not perfect every day.
And then you have those days that you don’t need to be calm and every day. There are things that happen in your life that when you sit down in the chair where you can need to put your facade off perfect person but inside you’re still thinking about things and on your life and your car broke and there’s a mouse in the kitchen. And there is the school is calling you to pick up your daughter because she’s sick, whatever and then you don’t have the rights, composite, and then you look at your nurse asking like, no, I try, I don’t want the micro particles.
I know I want the macro, and probably actually that nurse never worked with you before. It’s actually a temp nurse that is just there. She doesn’t know anything. So I always say, just say, obviously in a very nice and polite way and something I learned very recent. People are happy in their jobs when they feel that they are treated as adults, and this is something that I learned from the employees from Google and Netflix and all these super fancy offices and they understood that people don’t care.
If you give them free food, they have a gym, you have cinema, you have all this super cool things in their office. So if you don’t treat them as adults and you don’t give them this freedom, they won’t be happy. So just make sure you treat all your team as adults, as people with their own knowledge and capacity.
And then you’re not trying to micromanage everything. And the same with your patients and the same way your family. When you need to make yourself, and we’re going to talk back to talking to kids, you need to, and this is what they say, you need to talk to them like adults, because you need to make them feel that they have an autonomy and they can do things on their own.
So this is the way they’re going to develop as independent people, right? So it’s a little the same. And unfortunately, a lot of these big societies and governments and people that they try to control the way we work and live. They don’t treat us as adults, and this is what makes you not being happy or in your job or in your profession or in your life. When you start feeling like, okay, I am an adult and by adult I mean someone that can take his own decisions, then things I think go much better.
[Jaz]
Amazing. I think what we, I’d love to know now we’re going to wrap up and it’s been really nice to talk about all these themes that we don’t talk about enough. And every guest I talk with about the non clinical stuff, the directions we go in are just absolutely wonderful. Sometimes it’s about 20 percent crossover, but it’s always a themes that we just need to hear over and over again, right? Because just like we hear about the different bonding protocols and the power of etch and which percentage of hydrofluoric acids do you, we hear that over and over again.
We also need to hear these themes over and over again. And I think what you brought was a lot of new themes today. So maybe thanks so much. I’d love to share with the Protruserati about your next event. I’m looking forward to joining. I know Andre Cardoso, George Andre Cardoso, my dear friend will be there as well, cause you’re bringing him there. Is that a surprise by the way? Am I allowed to say that?
[Mehy]
No, no. Anymore. No, anymore. We were trying to, by the way, I’ve got super inspired by you with your podcast. This is how I mean, I knew Andre, from the clinical side. I didn’t know the Andre coach side. So I heard him at your podcast. I fell in love and I said, you know, okay, I’m going to ask him and then I ask you, you know, I was like, hey, I think this is going to happen.
And you were so happy. So, and there is there George Cheetam and Georgia, then this is also part of the panel. So there was a big restorative Kings, alumni and the faye Donald, one of the super cool hygienist in this country. So she’s going to bring that perspective so we have the different perspective from the clinic owner to the super associate hygienist to talk about teams. We’re going to be talking about a lot of what we’ve been talking today about communication between your team, how to, the feedback, receiving leadership management. So yeah.
[Jaz]
Is this something that you think people, dentists can bring their assistants, their nurses to as well?
[Mehy]
Yeah, I encourage this year and we even have like a super special prize for people that they want to bring their whole team. I think it’s like half price if you want to bring the whole team because I think it’s a very cool group activity where you can learn. I mean, if I could, I would bring my whole team to all the courses that I do. Because it’s the real way that you can implement. So I think it’s a very good activity to do the whole group. So I encourage everyone.
[Jaz]
Tell us more about the activity in sense of what actually happens. What’s the actual format of the end? We touched on it earlier, but just to, cause there’s a few different types of events that you run, this one is the Dentorama, right? So. There’s the one that’s like the skits and the acting. Obviously you throw most surprises in, but then the panel discussion and audience, is that what to expect?
[Mehy]
Yeah. So this is the drama is done at the Royal institution in Mayfair, which in central London, which is an incredible venue, has a very majestic theater. If you’ve seen the images that we have in our socials, you can see a little bit of the setup. So what to expect. And then it starts like going to a theater literally like this. We’re going to start with a show where going to put some scenarios, all is in a comedy. So it’s very fun. We write this together with Nicole O’Neill, which is super talented actors and theater director.
So it’s very, very well curated. So you’re going to have a lot of fun. And then after that, takes like 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, depends on the act. And then we pass to the panel of experts, which will be debating about, and talking about all the dramas that we’ve seen during the act, and then we open up to the audience, we all share, we have then a break or perhaps, you’ll have some complimentary drinks and needles, and then we do this again.
Where there’s another act so every act plus the debate is like an hour each and then after we would finish at nine and thirty there is a social in the same venue and then for the late ones the people that they want to continue also we are doing an after party and in another venue nearby so for people you know there are some people like they like to keep socializing.
[Jaz]
Something in it which is a very fresh approach to what you’re doing. Very much needed in the way of delivering. It is education, but it’s more than education. It’s talking about these higher level topics. It’s talking about team’s a great thing. So I’m going to pitch it to, even though we’re in Reading, the team, I’m still going to pitch it to them. I was like, listen, and I’m sure some of the nurse colleagues would love to come and they hardly get to go to these things.
They really do not have that kind of fun that we do. And I think if there’s one event they attend this year, that really makes them feel like, wow, like, I can’t believe my practice took me here. I think that’s, this is going to be a very memorable one for them.
[Mehy]
100 percent is a huge favor that you can do to your team and they don’t get to experience. Unfortunately, a lot of our nurses and hygienists and therapy is the cool part of dentistry that for me is this conferences network meeting people that they go through the same struggles that you do or success. And it’s very special. So, yeah, I encourage. Bring your whole team. Anyone is more than welcome to join.
Everyone will learn. It’s not an event for only dentists for sure. It’s actually this year we’ve designed one of the acts for hygienists and therapists. We talk about it and also we’re going to talk about the problems between dentists and nurses. We’ll have the two different kinds of dentists and nurses and how they treat each other. So the title is The Story Behind the Worst Dental Team Ever. So we’re going to concentrate all our savages situations in a few minutes. So it’s going to be intense.
[Jaz]
I think we’ll all be able to resonate with a lot of the themes that come across there. How can people book on? I’m going to put the link in the show notes. I’ll be there. I’ll be joining you guys in the audience and I’m very excited for it. If it’s anything like your previous event, I mean, I can’t wait. My only criticism maybe of your event was it literally like it flew by so quick.
It was like two hours. Like it’s social already, which is great. I don’t know, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the social, but it was like, everything just was like in the blink of an eye, I was like, wow, that was so engaging. So, it’s definitely a very fun day. What’s the website? I’ll put it in the show notes for anyone who’s on the laptop now. What’s the website? How can they come to the event? It’s 18th of October, right? Friday?
[Mehy]
18th of October, Friday. Doors open 6pm, so it’s after work. You can, the show starts at 7. And then, yeah, we’ll be there till late. The website is globaldentalcollective. com. You can get access to the shows and drama.
From there, you can get the tickets. We’ve created a special discount for your audience, just for the protrusive podcasts. So we’ll share that, also with you. And then-
[Jaz]
Try and make it Protrusive. Because everyone’s used to just going and typing in protrusive and coupon codes. People sometimes go on like fashion websites and just accidentally type in protrusive because they’re just so used to using protrusive as a coupon code. So if you can make it that for everyone, they’ll do that.
[Mehy]
Perfect. And that’s going to be easy. protrusive as a code, and then you’ll get a huge discount. And we want to have as many people as we want. There’s like 400, respecting 400 people. So it’s probably the biggest audience in any one day conference in UK. So then the conference is going to be cool.
[Jaz]
Amazing. I can’t wait to see that. I can’t wait to see the Protruserati who come there. Please bring your teams. I’m literally going to message Zoe and the team now saying, ladies, do you want to, come to this? I think that’d be pretty, pretty fun. And I think now that we have the Elizabeth line, Reading and London, that’d be quite good for us as well.
So that’d be good. Mehy, honestly, thank you so much for coming on, talking about these themes, talking about vulnerabilities, opening up about your past and your dips in that dentistry and then how engaged you are now and your sort of the work that you do, and also just generally thank you for the work you do.
You, the Global Dental Collective is the GDC we actually need. I’m pretty sure when you came up with the name, you came up with a name.
[Mehy]
That was actually, actually, that was, yeah, that was Joe Lovett and it was a bit of a joke. And now we’re a bit of trouble because we can’t really use only the letters.
So we’d see what we do with that. But they’re fine with that. They’re happy with that. So I think also, I don’t know if they like it or not, but it’s how it is. But yeah, we don’t want to compete with that. We just want to help.
[Jaz]
Definitely not. We have different purposes, but brother, thank you so much. I’ll put the links in the show notes. So it’d be great to see you guys there. And thanks so much for speaking about these topics today.
[Mehy]
Thank you so much, Jaz. Thank you for having me.
Jaz’s Outro:
There we have it guys. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. Hope you enjoyed those really hard hitting themes that
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