Sharpen your axe! Principles for selecting continuing education

Dr Phillip Palmer, Simon Palmer, November 2010 - Now that the dental board has made continuing education compulsory, the question has to be asked:

‘On what basis should a practice choose continuing education?’

Some practices will look at time spent on continuing education in terms of production lost while clinicians are at the course. This approach reminds me of the woodcutter that is far too busy chopping trees to take time out to sharpen his axe. The woodcutter who doesn’t take the necessary time sharpening his axe will cut wood at a declining rate and will not be able to keep up with the other woodcutters who have sharp axes.

In much the same way, a dental practice that is too focused on practicing dentistry to send its dentists and team members to courses, is condemning itself to a future of being less efficient and having lower (and declining) production.

Practices that look at continuing education in terms of production lost will make predictable continuing education choices based on the following principles:

• A 1-day course is always going to be preferable to a 2-day course;
• Sending a single person to a course to bring skills back to the practice is always going to be preferable to sending everyone who needs the training;
• Sending front desk or DA staff to learn practice management techniques to bring back to the practice is always going to be preferable to sending a hygienist or dentist.

What is wrong with making course choices on this basis?

Continuing education should be seen in terms of the potential long term benefit rather than the short term loss. Once we are open to this way of looking at continuing education it allows us to see that:

• While a 3-day course may mean missing out on three times more production than a 1-day course, one needs to weigh this cost against the fact that it may improve productivity in the future by double.
• While sending a single team member to a course to bring skills back to the practice may save several registration fees…it will probably reduce the effectiveness of the learning as:
  • this limits your practice's learning to what that one attendee thought was important;
  • this means trusting your practice development to a game of Chinese whispers. The message and benefit of the course is inevtiably going to be watered down and distorted with each person who passes the message on.
• While sending a front desk or DA to learn practice management techniques and bring them back to the practice may seem like a way to maximize production for the practice in the short term it also reduces the effectiveness of the courses as:
  • effective practice management involves everyone having the same expectations about overall practice vision as well as job descriptions, systems, procedures.
  • the more effective way to implement change and a new vision for the practice is from the top down rather than the bottom up.
  • clinicians in a practice play leadership roles in a practice even in non-clinical areas such as appointment scheduling. For nonclinical staff to learn practice management (without the owner or clinicians knowing what was learnt) and then try to implement changes would be extremely difficult if not impossible.

Conclusion

The Australian dental industry will be divided in their response to compulsory continuing education.

Some practices will choose to look at it as a burdensome hoop that the dental board are making the practice jump through. These practices will try to get their compulsory hours done in a way as quickly as possible and in a way that makes minimum impact to the short term practice production.

For other practices compulsory continuing education will act as a catalyst for investment in areas the practice needs to improve. For these practices compulsory continuing education will lead to more systematized practices with increased and more varied production.

Which category will your practice fall into?