Together and apart

The prospect of direct access has dominated the dental news and chatter lines, understandably. Whilst most of the attention has been on ‘who can do what, when and to whom?’ – there are other, potentially equally important issues for dental practices to start thinking about.

I’ve had direct personal experience of what a fragmented team can look like. When the thinking’s not joined up, the team members themselves become unsure of their roles, boundaries and interactions, and the situation can look even worse from the point of view of the ‘customer’.

Given the current imbalance between the numbers of registered dental hygienists and therapists in contrast to the number of registered dentists, you don’t have to be a genius to see that the effects of the latest changes will be some time in becoming apparent. That gives us a breathing space to plan how things should work – and work properly – when their full impact begins to be felt. However, for some practices, there may be little or no time at all, if they are already benefiting from an existing skill-mix in their business.