The community of endodontics is built on care for the craft and for the wellbeing of patients. To find meaningful success, endodontists invest back into the field to grow its collective knowledge.
Join as we discuss:
- Motivation and loyalty within specialties
- Progressions within the endodontic community
- Communication skills within your practice
“We all search for excellence within ourselves and our practices, and then the specialty. But really, that comes back to the patient in the chair.” – Scott Doyle
Motivation and loyalty within specialties
Scott has always been a team player who strives to contribute value and drive results. He aims to fully engage in all areas of his life, including his practice and specialty.
“You don't do it for the credit. You don't do it for the accolades.” Scott points out, “Because it's such a small space, it has to be intrinsic versus some degree of altruism. Just getting out there and contributing—it's about the people.”
Everything circles back to the patient in the chair and the safest, healthiest solution.
Applying best practices in unprecedented times
After switching a much-anticipated conference to virtual, amid COVID-19 restrictions, there was concern that there wouldn’t be the same impact and reach. However, the board persevered. Their dedication and loyalty to the endodontics community ensured success on all fronts.
Scott applied that same innovation to his practice, where new policies and procedures seemed to come in every other day. He and his partners worked ceaselessly to figure out new ways of providing care.
Through comparing notes with other practices and diligent check-ins, Scott managed to keep almost his entire staff throughout peak levels of uncertainty. As a team, they brought patients the care they needed when they needed it.
“It's not all about doing one more case, sometimes it's about not doing a case.” – Scott Doyle
Progressions within the endodontic community
Dentistry as a whole is a constantly shifting industry, and with new practices and treatments comes the potential to prevent high-risk cases involving intrusive intervention.
Fracture prevention is a critical focus across endodontics, and getting ahead of a fracture is a sizable step in reducing oral emergencies. “Preventing first, but then managing them, that's always the hard thing.” Scott shares.
Treating a fractured tooth is no small matter, and there’s much to consider — patient expectations, the consequence of failure if it doesn't heal, or if the patient has continued bone loss with the risk of being a less ideal candidate for an implant, to name a few. Implants are an obvious — though not simple — solution to an unsavable tooth. The complications attached to those procedures are not taken lightly.
“Patients tend to try to preserve their teeth, if possible.” Scott explains, “But that's up to us to inform them — and imaging is part of that — especially when it comes to fractures, I think that's important.”
The endodontics community is always on the search for more effective treatments, and the likelihood of procedures and practices looking entirely different 25 years from now is high.
“Being a continuous lifelong learner — that's what endodontics is.” – Scott Doyle
Communication skills within your practice
Scott is a partner — alongside eight others — at Metropolitan Endodontics. They have four locations and take great care to learn and grow from one another at every opportunity. They boast a balanced mix of generations, where the more experienced partners learn from younger members just as much as they do from one another.
Part of what makes Metropolitan Endodontics a success is their mindset around decision making — they have a ‘patient and practice first’ policy built for centering every choice around what’s best for those two elements and not any single party.
Cultivating trust and loyalty throughout the team is another critical factor of successful operations. And that goes across other locations, as well. They occasionally run into challenges with consistent branding across their four locations, but with solid communication and patient-centered decisions, they come out on top.
Advice for young dentists joining a practice
Just like joining any new team, entering a new practice as an up-and-comer can be intimidating.
“It's really about the people. It's not about having a nice waterfall in the entrance, or even your reputation.” Scott explains.
He breaks it down into the essential considerations to remember when looking to join a practice. Ask yourself, do you connect with them:
- Philosophically?
- Clinically?
- Practice wide?
Choosing a practice to join is about the people, your impact, and treating each case to the best of your ability while giving yourself the grace required to transition into a new environment. Like all areas of endodontics, success comes with embracing the lifelong learner mentality.
To make sure you never miss an episode of The Endo Files, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the website, or your favorite podcast player.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Endo Files in your favorite podcast player.
