Why does any practice have associates?

This post is written by a dentist who will remain anonymous. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this. “Why does any practice have associates? Unless they generate” £400k net fees. Being very generous and assume that on net fees of £200k they make £40k profit (more like zero if practice needs to market to keep her/him busy). Where marketing required, again being generous, say associate brings in £20k profit after nurse, materials, share of Google, staff, utilities, rent, rates etc. (Again more likely to be zero if overhead worked out and divided equally instead of written off because you are there anyway). Consider the earning power of the principal in private practice to be approximate £400 per hour. (small MO or DO white filling £135, 20 mins.) £20,000 / £400 ph = 50 hours = one hour per week of principal earning power. The conclusion is that average associates are probably not worth the stress. Would you rather put up with the stress of keeping the associate busy and happy or just do the one or two hours work per week that you would have referred to him/her?”