Keeping your Dental Skills- Stay up to Date

Technology is improving at break-neck speed; research is constantly churning out discoveries and treatments; guidelines are being updated every few years. If you add to this a full clinic or hospital workload, it’s easy to see why many healthcare professionals are claiming they feel like they are ‘falling behind’.

Keeping skills sharp and staying on top of advancements don’t take a lot of time, but it does take commitment. Here are some steps that, when taken regularly, can keep your skills as sharp as the day you walked out of college. In this world of cut-throat competition, a single mistake would lead to the loss of a patient.

AGE WISELY:

It is observed that patients treated by younger doctors had significantly lower mortality compared with those treated by older doctors. Researchers have been quick to point out that the results do not prove that older doctors are simply not as good as their younger counterparts, rather that with age comes an increasing skill divide.

They believe that further healthcare professionals move away from formal study, the more they move away from the latest developments and knowledge of new treatments. Staying up to date with dental journals and attending CDEs, Dental Conferences, Dental Events can lessen that skill divide, as can seeing more patients. Interestingly, the study revealed that doctors who saw a large volume of patients had a high success rate, regardless of their age, suggesting that seeing a lot of patients might keep doctors up with advances in treatment. Also, you end up with a USP a certain skill that only you have.

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IT’S ALL ABOUT MATHS:

It used to be that people were either considered a ‘maths person’ or not, but what we know now is that maths is a skill that people can develop, and one that all healthcare professionals should grow and maintain. This is especially true of dental materials. You must have good working knowledge in areas such as proportions, trituration time, types of materials, setting time, working time, this not only saves a lot of wastage of expensive dental materials but also makes you apt in using less material in proper quantities, avoiding unnecessary loss of materials.

Keeping maths skills sharp requires diligence. Set aside time every week to study the materials, working time, new material in town, your buffer stock and things that require restocking. You will be surprised how much time it saves while you are working on the patient you have the exact knowledge of the things you are using.

LEARN WITHOUT YOUR BOOKS:

Evaluation is crucial to professional development. It should be ongoing and include a combination of self-assessment, peer review, and patient feedback. Similarly, there should be a mix of formal and informal learning. Casual discussions with peers and members of your team, including mentoring, can be just as powerful as attending extra courses, study days and conferences. Then there’s the simple practice of reading.

Subscribe to or download such apps (and make sure you regularly read!) journals, books and newspapers that relate to your specialty. Remember, it’s never too late to take charge of your professional development.

To give it a try check out Indian Dental Network, see how beautifully it helps you develop your skills, help you network with seniors and juniors likewise.

How do you keep your skills sharp? Tell us how you stay up to date by sharing your tips in the comments section below.

Indian Dental Network, one of the exclusive app for the Dentist, Dental Professional, Dentistry. It's one platform where every dentist can share their Dental information and boost their Dental Network and also explore in various Dental groups.