Victoria HarrisSuper Dentist BOOST 2023 was an amazing experience... not just for CE, but for all the connections and wisdom gained. So what did you MISS at Super Dentist BOOST Camp 2023?
For me, BOOST Camp made me remember the most fundamental fact of life — we are all human, including dentists who pry your mouth open and poke around in it and tell you to floss more.
As I got to meet more dentists throughout the weekend, and watch numerous speakers and sponsors tell their story, this fact became abundantly clear to me.
The first inkling of this was right off the bat with Dr. Maggie Augustyn's segment. Maggie wears her heart on her sleeve like a proud badge, and it showed immediately as she openly admits that she was not a happy dentist. Step 2 of her journey to change her life was this simple question — “why not me?”
I used to think this a lot about myself and my life, even though I’m not a dentist. Why do other people have such an easy time in life, while I find myself fumbling about? Comparison is more than a thief of joy, it is an antagonist to life itself, and as I watched more and more speakers, I realized this was a commonality amongst so many dentists and their lives.
Dr. Alan G. Stern himself dives deeper into this thinking in his segment with Flawed Decision #4: The Comparison Trap. His solution was this piece of golden-aged wisdom — ”You don't know what price he or she paid to get in that car or get in that house. You don't know if you are willing or able to pay that price…The only certainty if somebody pulls up in that car is that he or she is driving it. Everything else behind it is a backstory that you create yourself.”
While comparison may be the antagonist of our lives, it is seemingly at times a piece of connection as well. Everyone at Super Dentist Boost, whether a dentist or not, has suffered from comparison before. We all get inside of our heads, and some of us may choose to live there. We tell ourselves a certain story to make us feel like we have control.
The truth is, there is no control. We are all just humans, just people attempting to live our best life. While comparison has the ability to steal joy, it can also give us joy when we realize that we all compare, and no one is alone in this. In turn, we can connect as we recognize that we all come from this place of desiring acceptance and acknowledgment.
With this in mind for the rest of the weekend, it helped me to connect and help so many wonderful dentists and students. Funny enough, I was able to meet with both Dr. Lewis Chen & Dr. Arthur Volker, born and raised in Queens just as I was, and tuned into their Saturday CE segments!
Dr. Chen’s presentation on practice scalability, “To Scale or Not To Scale?” talks about what scaling means, the key aspects, and what factors and questions to ask yourself prior to scaling your dental practice:
“And of course you can't scale without leadership. So take a deep dive into, look at yourself in the mirror and say, what does that leadership look like? What is it? Servitude? Is it dictatorship? Whatever sort of philosophy that you subscribe to, is it sustainable for yourself as you start getting bigger?”
During break, I caught Temple University dental students, Alexandru Donos & Mei Lin Zhao, as they praised Chen’s lecture. They both discussed how dental school primarily focuses on the clinical side of dentistry, so Dr. Lewis Chen’s segment on scalability was extremely insightful, giving them valuable growth tools for the business side of dentistry.
For Mei Lin, this was especially helpful, as she wants to have her own start-up in the future, coming from a family of dentists: “One of the best speakers I’ve heard this past weekend was Dr. Lewis Chen’s presentation on scaling as a dental practice owner. He provides a step by step formula that is clear and concise, teaching you the basics of what needs to be done to grow your practice and expand from being a single practice owner to a multi-practice owner. School will not teach you any of this or even mention it at all, so Dr. Chen’s presentation was perfect as my first exposure to this topic of business practice management! If you ever get the chance, Super Dentist Boost is a must even if you’re not a practice owner because there are valuable life lessons, clinical dentistry, and patient communication and management skills being shared through lecture and through conversation!”
Still, a dental gathering wouldn’t be dentistry without clinical CE, brought to you by the great Dr. Arthur Volker on “The Bioclear Method for Successful Class II Restorations: How to Make Posterior Restorations less of a Pain in Your Posterior.” Volker discusses an innovative way to tackle Class II composites:
“The bio clear method, whether it's done in the anterior or posterior is usually a five-pronged approach, typically about isolation and cleaning. Secondly, it is about using a preparation design…then selecting the appropriate matrices and separators, and then the other one, which may be the most applicable to all, is the use of injection molding, of preheating your composite. and seeing if you can take advantage of that, and then finally polish.”
Volker’s hour-long segment dives in detail about these posterior restorations, being an instructor for The Bioclear Learning Center, he’s an expert on this restoration method. His CE was highly sought after by many of our campers, including Dr. Robert McKernan of Big Gay Smiles, a dental practice in Washington, DC.
From talks on comparison and practice transformation, to scalability and posterior restorations, these aforementioned segments barely scratch the surface of the wide range and variety of presentations and knowledge given to attendees on practice start-up and management.
Not only dental wisdom, but so many relationships and connections were created too.
Dr. Julia Truong, from San Jose, CA, met another fellow dentist, Dr. Aishwarya Kumar, whose practice is only 5 minutes away from her! Without BOOST, they would’ve never known how close they were to connecting to feel less alone.
Overall, BOOST 2023 was a great opportunity for dentists in all stages of their career, whether they were a dental student, associate, fresh practice owner, or an owner of 10+ years! There’s something for everyone, even for non-dentists like me 🤓
- Victoria Harris, Dental Nachos’ Client Services & CE Coordinator
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