The business of dentistry

Having little or no training in the business of dentistry doesn’t make you a bad dentist, but possessing those skills would make you a better dentist.

As part of its corporate social responsibility, Henry Schein Dental has been running the courses at King’s College for the past two years, free of charge. To date, approximately 40-50 per cent of students at King’s have enrolled on the courses, demonstrating their willingness to acquire business, as well as clinical, skills.

As dentists, we possess some business skills, but knowledge of the real in-depth business acumen needed to run a successful practice is not something that we have immediate access to. Henry Schein Dental on the other hand has the right people, with appropriate skills who can transfer this knowledge to our students.

At King’s College Dental Institute, we look at our provision of healthcare from an ideal perspective. We’re a bit altruistic and idealistic perhaps, because we want to clinically train students in the best way possible, and an unintentional consequence of this is that we do not focus on the business side. But the reality is that once students leave us, they enter a business environment where bottom line profitability is very important.