Another year is about to wind down. 2014 is a few days away from being history. Hopefully it was a good one for you and your dental practice. If it wasn’t, what do you plan to do about it? This is the time of year for making resolutions–promising ourselves that we will in fact have the strength, the willpower, and perhaps the courage to make positive changes.

My job as a coach and advisor to dentists is to strategize with them about their practice and support and facilitate the changes we have  identified. These changes are critical and necessary to help them fulfill resolutions made with the greatest of intent. Two years ago, I offered comments on this very topic. One year ago,  I began a 10 part series of posts where I identified the reasons–in my experience–that separated eminently successful dentists from the majority of their peers. All of those posts are archived on the Blog Page of my website.

So here we are again. A fresh start awaits you. But as I have said so often and truly believe, “Hope and prayer is not a strategy”.  One of my most influential mentors and motivators is Seth Godin. Earlier this month, he penned the most prophetic statement: “If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you’ve just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.” That is flat out brilliant!

Change is hard and change is rarely easy to accomplish. John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of UCLA, whose teams amazingly won 10 NCAA championships between 1964 and 1975, realized the difficulty of change. When asked the reason for his success, he said it was his ability to get his players to do what they didn’t want to do in order to get the results they wanted.

I would imagine that all of you desire to improve. So my message today is not a sermon or a lecture, but rather a gentle reminder and a challenge to actually make that plan to reach the potential you deserve and of which you are capable. Every one of us can identify three or four areas where we can improve. Take the time–it may take hours or it may take days–but force yourself to sit down and write down your goals. That often is the most difficult part – identifying the goals. But once the goals have been articulated, figuring out how to reach them  becomes infinitely easier.

Good luck! I wish all of my loyal readers a healthy and happy and prosperous New Year.

Those of you who read my blog posts know that I am a big fan of using the iPad as an extremely effective tool for presenting dentistry to your patients. A few weeks ago, I suggested downloading the DDS GP app to your iPad in order to take advantage of the beautifully designed drawings and graphics that illustrate dental problems and the solutions to those problems.

Another great enhancement for your iPad is Shuttersnitch. Shuttersnitch is an app (the cost is a mere $19.99) that receives and displays pictures wirelessly on an iPad moments after they are shot. Instead of taking digital photos and then plugging the memory card into a laptop in order to upload the photos, there now is a much simpler and less cumbersome way to accomplish the task.

As long as you are using a digital SLR wi-fi enabled camera to take your photos, Shuttersnitch is the perfect partner for the wireless image transfer system in your camera. It takes in the photos and almost instantly displays them on the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen. Shuttersnitch has specific support of wireless SD memory cards from Eye-Fi, but can also accept pictures from any camera transmitter that is capable of an FTP transfer. Shuttersnitch provides a detailed set up guide, and I am told that you don’t have to be a computer whiz to figure this all out.

I firmly believe that high tech equals high reward. Once you take the time to get comfortable with the mechanics, your case acceptance should skyrocket.

I have long been an advocate of the iPad as the principal and most effective way for a dentist to present dental treatment to a patient. The intimacy of sitting right next to your patient, the phenomenal vibrancy of the photos or images,  the ability to manipulate these images – allowing the patient to touch the screen – these are all great advantages compared to showing X-rays or drawing squiggly lines on bracket table covers.  Or what I really hate is having a patient sit alone in a room watching  a video with voice over.

That is why I am so excited about DDS GP. It is an app that you can download to your iPad. It was invented by Dr. Robert Marcus, a practicing California general dentist. DDS GP is presented as a series of beautifully designed drawings or graphics that illustrate dental problems and the solutions to those problems. The library of drawings is very complete,  literally everything you could ever imagine.

The dentist sits with the patient and has a personal conversation – your words at your pace. Just below the main demonstration area of each screen is a bar with a round handle called the slider. Moving the slider portrays the increasing severity of a condition or the treatment steps to resolve the problem. I especially like the presentations for a fractured tooth and for cracked tooth syndrome. The app also does a great job illustrating periodontal disease and root canal treatment.

I don’t think the graphics and drawings are especially effective for presenting cosmetic dentistry. For that, you absolutely want to have the before and after photos of your nice cases downloaded into the iPad. You can also easily import the digital photographs of your patient’s smile. The DDS GP app allows you to add these photos. Coordinating all of this information  into one tablet will, in my opinion, definitely lead to greater case acceptance.

A very cool feature is the ability to incorporate the drawings you showed to the patient into a custom designed treatment plan that can be handed or e-mailed to a patient.

The technology is very intuitive and easy to learn. You can even draw with your finger right over the graphics if you feel that it will help illustrate a point you are trying to make. I have been told that the app is continuously being improved and updated and that the customer service support is good.

The cost for the app is a one time fee of $400.  There are no subscriptions or annual fees. You can find out more at the company website.