Lighting the fireworks - a team training day review

I promised you a summary of the ground we covered at my team training day with Dental Rooms, Wimbledon on Wednesday (with my sincere thanks to Dev Patel, Angela Auluck and the team).

Morning.

1. Take a look at my "12 reasons to be miserable and 12 reasons to be cheerful" so as to set the scene for the day ahead - there is always a "sh*t list" and a "hit list" in dentistry (and in life) and we have to choose which list we are going to live with;

2. Brand booklets - I shared with my audience the brilliant brand/staff booklets created by The Campbell Clinic, Lytham Dental Care and Dentistry by Cure Clinics and (in 3 teams) asked them to read, digest and feedback to the meeting what they liked about the booklets and how useful they can be in recruitment and setting standards;

3. Jam jars - my famous experiment - looking at the accounts to year end 31st March 2022 and identifying where the money goes - identifying where, for each £100 collected, the money is directed between lab and materials, clinician's fees, wages, overhead, reinvestment and tax - and how much is left for the owners (a lot less then the team thought!);

4. Behaviours - a look at 'The Karpman Drama Triangle", how to deal with difficult conversations and The Politeness Manifesto - communication between team members and with patients.

Afternoon

1. Moments of Truth in The Patient Journey;

2. Identifying exactly what a "moment of truth" is they six moments in a patient journey when they occur;

3. I then split the team into 6 groups and asked each of them to suggest how Dental Rooms could improve their patient experience;

4. First Digital Contact

5. First Human Contact

6. First visit/consult;

7. Treatment coordination;

8. Treatment Plan Presentation;

9. The End of Treatment Review

10. We then created an 18-month timeline, split into 90-day quarters, and allocated each item of improvement to the timeline in a realistic agreement of when that could be achieved.

By the end of my session, we had a complete workflow until the middle of 2024, identifying exactly who, how, where, when and why their patient journey would improve.

All the team were there (including self-employed clinicians) and all agreed on what to do, why to do it and when to do it by.

I literally had to run out of the front door to catch my 16:00 ride to Heathrow - and that after an 08:00 start.

I mentioned it yesterday - a Champions League team - a pleasure to work with - but also the satisfaction of knowing that I had been a catalyst in helping them to move forward (all of this, by the way, whilst the builders were working around us on extending to the two floors above the existing practice to create 4 new surgeries, a call centre, admin offices and new staff facilities).

I love days like this, they remind me that excellence is within us all and that, sometimes, all you need to do is light the blue touch paper, stand back and watch the fireworks.

"Evening Chris

Thank you for a fantastic Dental Rooms growth day. You covered everything the team needed and opened the doors for more open mindedness and collaboration for which we are really grateful.

The feedback is coming in on the whatsapp group, the team ‘had a great day’ ‘it was very informative’ ‘I learnt a lot of new things today’ and ‘it was a very good learning experience’ amongst a few of the comments.

Chris you have set a very positive tone for 2023 for us…thank you for the support and motivation. We hope you’ve arrived in Belfast safe and sound. See you soon.

Best wishes

Ang"

Angela Auluck

Dental Rooms Wimbledon Village