AME: Everything Is Amazing and Nobody in Dentistry Is Happy

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[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00] Head to net32.com slash verydental and see what your practice could be saving. This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. Alan Mead is a dentist with too much time on his hands and too much recording equipment in his basement. Armed with an obsession to bring entertaining and informative content to the dental world in a way that's never been done before,

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_00] I give you the Alan Mead Experience. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Alan Mead Experience. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Mead. I'm a dentist, podcaster, and I'm torn between a technophile and a technophobe. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00] I'm leaning a little more towards the technophobe part right now because I literally just recorded this entire episode with my microphone muted. I could hear it in the headphones, but it was not recording anything. So I just burned through about 35 minutes of a recording and nothing got recorded. So I'm leaning a little harder towards the phobe part, but what's interesting is how my message is actually quite positive and grateful about stuff. I have lots to talk about.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00] The inspiration for this episode came from the fact that September 8th has been an important date in my life over the years, over my career years. So on September 8th, 2000, I proposed to my wife to be married. And then literally one year later, September 8th, 2001, we got married.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00] And interestingly, that date, if you kind of recognize, is also three days before the September 11th attack. So my wife and I just celebrated 25 years of being married and celebrated the September 11th. So just to give you an idea of my age and where my career ranged. September 8th, 1998 was the day that I bought my dental practice. And I've been in the same dental practice for that long.

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00] And interestingly, September 8th, 2013 was the day, I don't know if it was the exact day. It might've been just the week that we opened up in my new office. So I've been in my current office location for 13 years now. So this time of year has always been, I look back on my career a lot because a lot of big things happen on these particular dates.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00] But the other thing is, is that when you, if you're listening to this, you may or may not, you're probably younger than I am. If you're listening to this, you're probably younger than I am. There might be a few oldsters out there, older than me, but most of you are probably younger than me. Graduated, you know, more recently than I have. And I just was, I was thinking about and watching videos from Louis CK.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00] And he had a bit, he was doing about 15 years ago all over the place where everything is amazing and no one is happy. And his whole point is that like smartphones are amazing. The technology that we have around us is amazing. And we are so impatient for it. It's, it's very, it's very true. He's like, his point is like, like if you're trying to do something on your phone and you're like, it's not happening right now. And he's like, give it a minute.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00] It's going to space. It's very, the points are very well taken. However, this technology has, has soaked into our, our being so completely that, that we take it for granted all over the place. I use Bluetooth headphones and Bluetooth speakers and like all of it for, I have a smartphone and I listen to music, audio books and podcasts almost constantly. So I, I am a guy who I've had so many different pairs of earbuds, wireless earbuds and wireless headphones. I can't even count.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00] I lose earbuds. Like a couple of weeks ago, I lost my earbud case. No idea where it went. The earbuds, I had to set the earbuds down. I had no case to put them in, no way to charge them. And so I was earbud-less for a little while. And so I ordered some new ones because I couldn't find it. I kind of knew that I was going to find, eventually find the case. And so I'd feel dumb, but then we'd have more. My son does the exact same thing.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00] He's, my son lost one earbud at prom this year and made it like, then they, no, he lost both. He dropped the case, picked the case up, lost both earbuds, didn't know he had lost them. We found one earbud at the prom location the next day. Unbelievable. So anyhow, technology's everywhere. And we take it for granted. The fact that I can listen to a podcast in my ears while I'm, you know, mowing the lawn, feeding horses, working out, whatever,

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_00] and not be physically attached to the phone that is, has downloaded such a thing. It's kind of amazing. And we take it for granted. I complain about my earbuds. You know, the funny thing, the thing that I noticed the most with Bluetooth is how bad it is at handing, handing off from my earbuds to the, to the car and back. Like, so if I'm, if I'm talking to someone on the phone and I'm in the car and then I happen to get out, I'm going to go into the store and I want to keep talking to them in my earbuds.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00] For some reason, the car doesn't want to give up the, it's, it's wild. And, and I get furious about it and I complain about it almost constantly. And I think to myself, you have a phone in your pocket. Do you remember, you know, when you were a young man and if you wanted to talk on the phone, not only did you have to be at home, but you had to be essentially attached to the wall on some level. Yeah, we had some, we were connoisseurs of fine cordless phones in the Meade household, myself included.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_00] But for the most part, you had to be home to be able to be on the phone. And if you wanted to be in a different room than the phone was attached to the wall, you needed a really long cord. Otherwise your mom was going to listen to what you were talking to with your friends and stuff. I mean, and now you literally can take a phone call essentially anywhere. um, they say that most phone calls, like what percentage of phone calls are taken in the bathroom. Just think about that. Think about that.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00] So this is, this is like a, a, a theme in my life where it's a technology comes along. We adapt it and then we take it for granted almost immediately. And, and I, I'm sort of thinking to myself, everything is amazing and no one is happy. I, I, I tend to, I really appreciate Louis C.K.'s take on.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00] So I graduated from dental school at the university of Minnesota in 1997, which means, uh, I am 29 years into this, this career. I bought my dental practice, as I mentioned on September 8th, 1998, which was 28 years ago. Um, so I've been in the same dental practice for 28 years.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00] And let me tell you that we did, I, as soon as we, I bought that practice, I bought Dentrix, which is, and I'm still on Dentrix. So there's some weirdness there a little bit, but, but when I bought Dentrix, it was on a CD-ROM that you would load into each individual computer. And the computers were on a, on a, uh, a network and there was a server essentially.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_00] Uh, so it was, you know, on some way it was like, it was a network, but I don't know that we had, I did eventually get internet into that office. And so the, so I don't know that we ever had wifi there. Maybe we did. I don't, I don't know. 2013 would I've had wifi there? Probably I did. Uh, but I know we, we, we had, we had broadband internet into the office, you know, at some point, but I mean, for a long time we didn't.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00] Um, we had a computer network and we had Dentrix loaded on with CD-ROMs. And, and I remember that, that the price that they, that Dentrix could extract from you was, was relatively low. Cause if you didn't pay them, they just didn't upgrade you to the, but the software still continued to work. They wouldn't support you without, it's very funny. I, I think of the subscription models that we have now where we're shelling out, you know, 1200 bucks, 1500 bucks a month for our software because it's a subscription model. They used to just send you a CD-ROM and that's what you would do.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_00] But, but the other thing is, is I had a, I had film radiography. I think about some of these technologies that as a dental student, actually in the very dental Facebook group, I put up a post, a poll asking like what technology that you use on a regular basis now in your office would have blown your dental school mind. And I put some stuff up there. I would love it if you'd go to the very dental Facebook group and, and answer that because I think it's an interesting question.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00] I, so if you're not a member of very dental Facebook group, go, go to very dental or go to Facebook, search very dental. And then you can request an invite. All I ask is that you give a password because I want it to be people who are listening to the podcast. So I, I'm pretty, it's not a huge group because you know, there's only so many people that are going to do this. I asked for a password. You can use the password, Timmerman, Hornbrook, McQuethy, Lipscomb, Papa Randy, BioClear, Tiffany, Frank, Gary, any of those.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00] There's, there's probably more than that, that I forgot. There's a ton of them. Anyhow, any of those will get you in. And I want you to answer that question. I'm going to talk a little bit about a few of them that I know for sure. So I remember at the University of Minnesota, oral radiology was this class. Of course, you learned radiology from, and then, but then you had to clinically take radiographs. And, and you are graded on the 20 best full mouth sets that you took over your entire dental school career.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_00] And so you could always improve your grade on some level if you wanted to. So what you would do, you get, you would, if you were assigned to the oral radiology clinic, you would go in there and then people would be sent down for radiology. So if you were doing a new patient exam, you didn't do the x-rays. You were, you were, you'd send your patient down to oral radiography and they would check in there. And then you would be assigned to a student that was in oral radiology.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00] And they would, you'd bring them back and you would set them in this operatory. You'd put the big lead apron on them and the big collar. I remember that vividly. And then you would go about your way. You would do a full mouth set and you would do it the way they taught you. And frankly, it was a skill set that probably what you should have done. And I don't know if they, I can't remember if they did it as a radiation or as a rotation or not.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00] You should have just taken full mouth sets for weeks at a time because you were going to get better as you did it. As a skill set that they can explain it all you want. But until you're actually working on a patient and lining up the, lining up the cone with the film and all that stuff and, and, and asking questions and doing it, you weren't going to do very well. So you'd take your, your 18 films, uh, I think it was 18, what four bite wings and 18 films.

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_00] And then you would, you would take it to the, to the, the developer room, the, the, the, it was so crazy because in dark rooms that I was in later in my clinical career, they were quite a bit lighter. They had quite a bit more light. The dark room at the university of Minnesota was really dark, was really dark. And there was this, there was this, uh, woman who worked in there.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00] She was this tiny woman and she was brilliant at all, all things radiology, but, but she liked spent her, she was sort of like, she was like a little gnome. Cause she lived in the dark room part. Like you'd go in and it was like a whole different world. It was very dark and you'd have like, they had like six slots where you could, you could, you know, develop six developers where, you know, the one end, the, the dark room end, and then it would go out into the regular end. And you, you see, you'd feed your, your x-rays into the developer.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00] And there were always two films in the, in the packet. And then you had to put your lead foil in one thing and you put the disposables in the other thing. And they had a very specific way you were going to do it. And, and, uh, you know, the thing that you don't recognize now, cause I don't take that many x-rays myself. Typically my assistants are taking them or my hygienist or whatever.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_00] So I, I mean, I don't really know, but what I remember is you didn't know how well you did it until you put those stupid films in the, in the, the little frame. And I mean, a lot of times you were just way off and they graded you brutally. Like, like if you, right now you probably don't grade your own assistants as, as brutally as you were graded on your x-rays. And that's, I suppose that that makes sense.

[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_00] But the story was your grade came from the best 20 full mile sets that you took. And so you needed to, to get a decent grade in this, you need to take a lot of x-rays. You need to take a lot of x-rays and you needed experience. You need different kinds of patients with different shaped heads and all this stuff. But you didn't know how well you did until, you know, 25 minutes after you took the x-rays because of all the processing you had to do. And that poor patient was sitting, waiting to know how the x-rays turned out.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_00] And, and I kind of remember you'd, you'd bring them back. And of course I probably had seven retakes or something cause it wasn't perfect. They were measuring two millimeters distance, the distal most tooth on the lower arch and all this stuff. And so, you know, acceptable radiographs. It took a while for you to get any kind of confidence and ability to do that. And I mean, I get it. You're so that's every skill set in dentistry takes that, but I just remember hating it. I remember hating it.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00] And part of it was that like you couldn't, it was really hard to connect the skill set of lining it up and knowing what you're doing because it took so long to find out how well you had done. That was an interesting thing. And so then you, you radiography was, was a pet peeve. Everyone hated it. Everyone hated it. Like there was nothing worse. If you had to be assigned to radiography and, and oral radiography was one of these things where if you didn't have a patient, a lot of times you could get assigned to ORAD.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_00] And that was the worst thing you could, that could possibly happen. They always needed people in ORAD because they always needed people taking x-rays. Probably if I'd gotten smart, I'd just gone to ORAD all the time when I, and gotten better at it, gotten a better grade. But I just remember the lag between taking the x-rays and knowing how well you did and how harshly they graded you really got to me.

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_00] So, and the other thing that made me laugh at the University of Minnesota, God help you if you were in an operative situation where your, your professor wanted you to take an x-ray because you thought that you thought that, um, the ORAD clinic was bad. There was like one chair set up for radiography for the entire clinic and, and you'd have to wait in line and you'd have to set your patient up in this weird chair to, cause you only had, you know, x-ray units mounted to the wall.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_00] And, and, and, and you'd take the x-ray and of course you'd look like a fool because your, your, your professor wanted to see a PA and you clip the apex and then you had to do it again. And so like the, the technology was such that like, there's, it was a lot of pressure to get that right in the same way that like photography was like you could do a clinical case, take all the photos thinking you did great and really not know how, if you got what you needed until the film was developed. And that, that lag was a huge deal in dentistry.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_00] We never really think about that, but when you think about now, there is no lag. If you miss the x-ray, you just take it again right then because there's no lag. I remember in dental school that I, I want to say that the, the research in endodontics, like the endodontics instructors were working with early digital radio, radiography in, in dentistry. I don't think the grad endo people had digital radiography like typically.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_00] I don't think they did. Maybe they did, but I don't think they did. You already know crazy dental has practically unbeatable prices on everyday dental supplies, but how do we make that deal even sweeter? Free shipping. Jump over to crazydentalprices.com, fill your cart and enter promo code very ship, all one word at checkout. That's very ship, all one word to wipe out shipping costs on every single order. Even better, using that code directly supports the Very Dental Podcast Network.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00] Stock up, pocket the savings, get free delivery and help back the show. Use very ship, all one word today. So it was still kind of Star Wars, Star Trek to us. I think we at least at that point knew that it existed. Like it was something that, that could, but, but it was, it was still science fiction at that point. You were taking films, you know, oh God help you if you had to take a pano. That was, oh, so you had film.

[00:18:00] [SPEAKER_00] And, and I mean, I'm, I'm assuming that there's people listening to this podcast right now that, that don't even know how film work maybe, or maybe they, it was only something that they demoed you in dental school. I don't know. I should ask, I should ask younger dentists. I mean, did you get to use digital radiography in dental school or not? I don't even know. It's a good question.

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00] But to, to me in my mid nineties dental student brain, the idea of taking an x-ray that came up on the screen instantly was definitely science fiction. Definitely science fiction. It was wild. Rethinking about it now, according to Google, it's got a 90% penetration in the, in the system.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00] So basically 90% of dentists are using digital radiography and, and actually of that 10% that aren't, I think that that even includes people who have digital like sensors or, or phosphor plate in for their intraoral radiographs. And then they use a, a pano that's still film. So it's a, that's a high penetration. I suspect that's way higher than like scanners and stuff like that.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_00] So, I mean, this is a technology that has basically come from almost nowhere to almost everywhere in 30 years. That is a really fast adaptation. I think considering, okay, I'm a guy who remembers the time when we didn't have cable TV, like not even, not even dial up internet that, I mean, dial up internet was happening when I was in dental school 30 years ago.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_00] Like having a dial up modem in your, at home as a dental student was amazing. There was a time when I thought it was really crazy that I could dial up and dial into the university of Minnesota, uh, system, computer system. So I could get my, my email from, you know, my email was a university of Minnesota email. I didn't, or you're feeling wild and crazy.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_00] You could have, you could get on AOL with dial up and you'd go to, you'd buy a magazine that had hours, a CD ROM with hours on AOL. So you could have be on AOL is like, that was my experience of the internet even 30 years ago. But I mean, I remember we had it, we had a TV, we got our, we got a new TV downstairs the same time that we got cable. Cause before that we didn't have cable. We did have color TV, I think, but in, in this, this TV was amazing to us because it had a remote control.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_00] It had a clicker. It had like that Archie bunker clicking thing where it would make a specific sound. And so what I didn't realize was that the sound that it made, each button made a different sound. And that was the, that the different sound is what made the channels go up, channels go down or the volume to change. That's, that's how like, it was literally not electronic. It was, it was the sound that it was making. It's crazy. Like to think of that. And this was when I was a little kid, this was high tech. This was the, this was the pinnacle. Okay.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_00] And this is, this is, this is the same lifetime where we're talking about digital radiography, inter-oral scanners, AI. It's Gen Xers, man. We've seen a lot. We've seen, I don't know if, I mean, I guess my parents have seen even more. I mean, my parents, my parents have, my parents who use tablets in the internet and, and, and social media and stuff like that. They remember a time where they didn't have TV.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_00] So, I mean, like they've seen even more, but we, when you think about it, technology has changed so quickly and we take it for granted so quickly. Like, I know for a fact that in my office, I'm guilty of this as much as my, my team is, is that sometimes the, the software Dentrix imaging will glitch and it doesn't take the x-ray right or it doesn't save it right or something.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_00] And nine times out of 10, it's that the computer needs a new windows update or something dumb like that. Um, it's probably, it's probably operator error most of the time sometimes, but, but it can be glitchy. And so there's occasions where, oh geez, we didn't get to take the x-rays that we wanted to take, or we had to move them to a different room where the computer wasn't stroking out or whatever. And, and I mean, it's an inconvenience, but when you think about where we came from versus where we are now, God, you know, endodontics, you didn't have an apex locator.

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_00] You were basing your treatment on, on the, the length of where your files or your gut approach were, you know, on the apex with a, with a radiograph that you took. That if you were lucky, you had a dip tank that you could, it would take a minute or two versus, versus 10 minutes to find out where you were. It's for patient rubber dam and files in their tooth. And where now, I mean, we're literally finding, you know, with the apex locator, you can avoid half those x-rays. And then even the x-rays take no time at all. They're up instantly, essentially.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_00] Um, and we, you know, we just, it's amazing to me that my career has seen such a huge change and we are so able to take it for granted. That is amazing to me. We, our, our level of gratitude is relatively low. I'm guilty as charged, man. I'm, I think of this and I think of all the gripes that I have about some of the technology. I'm like, yeah, but, but you remember polysulfide impressions, bro. You remember, you remember, you know, taking 25 minutes to even get a grade for your, your full mouth set.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_00] And you remember that, that sucked way worse than what we've got now. So then the next technology that I think is so funny that I take for granted and sometimes can complain about is my inter-oral scanner. Right now I use a 3D, uh, a shining 3D elf scanner and I can basically scan an entire arch in about 30 seconds. And it is, it's shockingly good. Shockingly good.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_00] Every time I print one of those models, those 3D models that I make with a scanner out, I'm like, this is very good. Like even, even when the printer doesn't have as much, as much, you know, precision as the scan does, I'm shocked at how good, how good it is and how like I was in dental school and we didn't have anything like that. It was all impressions, you know, you, and I remember dreading impressions.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00] It's one of the most important things that we can do as a dentist when we're doing prosthetic dentistry is we need to be able to take an impression that, that mimics the mouth as closely as possible. And I just remember dreading it because it was a constant, it's a, it was a skill set that you needed reps at. And again, it was like radiography. Let's say you're taking a, an alginate and that was a two or three minute set.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_00] And, and like even that, that's much quicker to evaluate your work, uh, than it was for an x-ray, but it still was, you couldn't know right off what you had, what you had. And of course, if you, if you didn't get the impressions were analog, it was a one shot deal. If you didn't get what you needed, you were going to have to take another impression. There was no taking it over again. And now I think to myself, if I evaluate my model and I'm missing something, it's as simple as firing up the scanner and getting it. You know, it's, it's just, it's amazing to me. I remember.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_00] So when we were doing crowned bridge or inlays on lays, that sort of thing in operative dentistry and then in fixed process as well. Um, I remember in fixed process, they always used to demand that you came in with a, um, uh, a custom tray. And I, I, I resented that at the time. And I'm like, gosh, just think all the steps I got to take an algid and pour that and make the tray. And I got to do all this. And it was just more time in the lab. And I sort of hated it.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_00] But then after a while, I realized that the custom tray was a brilliant move when you didn't know what impression material the instructor was going to ask you to use. So mostly in operative, they would let you use polyvinyl most of the time and polyvinyl, at least you could pour more than once. And, uh, it had better tear strength and, and it, it might sit, it set faster and stuff. But honestly, in fixed process, you were just as likely to have to use polysulfide impression material as polyvinyl.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00] And even with, I didn't know how to manage tissue. I didn't know how to pack cord. I was new. I didn't know anything. Like, and there were some people that picked this stuff up really quickly. I was never anyone that picked anything up quickly. Um, so it took me forever to figure this stuff out. So, you know, getting an excellent impression. There were so many, you know, they told you how to do it, but then the, the physically doing it was so hard for me. And depending on the teacher, I just sometimes, so I, I remember having to take a lot of impressions.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_00] And if they said you're using polysulfide, you're like, ah, cause polysulfide. Okay. If you've never used polysulfide, first off, it looked like chocolate pudding and you would, you'd had a hand mix it and it was really hard to hand mix. You'd put a stripe of this white toothpaste looking stuff. And then a stripe of the Brown, you know, one was catalyst and one was base and you had to hand mix it. And honestly, hand mixing polysulfide was hard. You're really hard. And I didn't really know how to do it. I was new at it.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_00] It was all, uh, in, in, but the, the, the one thing you had with polysulfide was lots of time. Cause the set time was like 10 or 12 minutes. It was brutal. So, I mean, you, you could take some time to mix it. It took a time. It took a long time to mix it, but so at least you weren't rushing. Necessarily to get it, you get it in the tray and you get it in the poor patient's mouth. And you, by this time you'd put a big trash bag over the patient cause it was such a huge mess and it was runny and everything. But then the set time was like 12 minutes.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_00] So right now, I mean, if you can imagine having to hold something in someone's mouth for like more than a minute and a half right now as a dentist, I'm like, this is crazy. I just don't have the patience for it. I have to walk away and have the assistant hold it and stuff. 12 minutes with that page. That was a really long time. It was a really long time. And the tear strength on it was horrible. So if you had a deep margin, half the time it didn't come out like it tore and you just knew you're going to have to do it over again. And you got one pour. You better pour that right.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_00] No bubbles because you might have to take another impression. It was all dental school for me because of these workflows. It was always one step forward, three steps back. And I'm surprised I made it. I'm surprised I made it. I did come out a drug addict, so there's that. I tend to chalk that up to maybe I was going to be no matter what. But dental school didn't help things with my substance uses because it stressed me out. And if you were lucky, you got to use polyvinyl. But I always made a custom tray because that was the one thing.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_00] If they told you you're going to use polycylphide, at least you knew you'd get the tray seated better. If you had a custom tray. So I started making custom trays for everything just because at least I knew my impressions would likely. It was like something you could do in advance to make it so your impressions might turn out a little bit better. I just remember all that stuff and all the stuff we had to go through. And now I think to myself, like my workflow for Crown & Bridge is like for sure the impressions are not the longest part.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_00] I mean the longest part might be tissue management. If tissue has bled at all, you have to get it to stop bleeding and retract. Just nothing takes any – the longest time now is probably anesthesia at this point. Because you know that your pre-op – the other thing is you're going to have – I always do full arch impressions pre-op because it takes no time at all with the scanner. It's amazing. The technology is nuts.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00] It's – if you had – if you like took a scanner back in time and showed it to me when I was in dental school, I would have thought you were – I mean Star Wars or Star Trek would be more realistic than being able to see a 3D scanner, an inter-oral scanner work. Just unreal. Like I can't even – and knowing that's the case, my career I've seen all these giant changes and for the better. Really for the better. Yes, the way that we pay for it is probably – but the reality is for the better.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_00] It's for the better. It's better for patients. It's better for me. I like it more. I still can – I can take it for granted and be cranky about it so fast. In other words, you know, everything is amazing and we're all unhappy just like Louis C.K. said. So when you're feeling bad about some of the dental stuff that you have to do, it's really worth remembering where we've come from. So it helps that I'm a Gen Xer. I've been around for a while. I've been in this career for a while and I've seen the – it's better now.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_00] It's more fun to do things like that. There's just a lot of things that have come along that made things better. And yeah, maybe they're more expensive. Maybe. But the actual doing of the dentistry is just a lot more fun. And I think that the learning is easier too. Like I think like for instance, the reps that you might have to do to learn how to take a great set of x-rays much faster now. You get much better feedback, that sort of thing. I think all these improvements are for the better.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00] And next time you're feeling bad about clinical dentistry, you might just remember that, wow, it's really actually come a long ways. Now, you know, patients are still patients and people are still difficult to deal with and all that stuff. But we have – there's a lot of really cool advances. Everything is pretty amazing. And we can be happy about it. I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_00] I just was laughing about how far things have come in a short period of time in my lifetime, in my career, you know, less than 30 years. Just what is commonplace in dentistry now compared to what it was. So we've got it pretty good in some ways, in a lot of ways.

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_00] And, I mean, I'm not even starting to talk about AI and how basically, you know, chart notes now can actually – or almost no money at all can be done essentially for you better than you've ever done them before. And what's really funny about this is now it isn't that – it's a time savings for someone who really took a lot of time with their notes and did a good job. Or people like me that just didn't do that good of a job, now we can do a really good job and it doesn't take much effort at all.

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_00] It's just like, wow, wow, there's a lot we have to be grateful for in this profession and how we can do it better. And I kind of need to take that into my day-to-day life because dentistry can be a real grind on you. But we have some amazing things going on in dentistry and we've come a long way. That's my point. Again, go take my poll. I want to see what you guys think because there might be some things that we are doing now that I didn't even think of. I would love to see what you have to say. So go take the poll in the Very Dental Facebook group if you're not a member and go join.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_00] I really appreciate you guys listening. I've actually enjoyed recording this episode twice. I'm pretty sure this one recorded so thank God for that. And thanks for listening. Keep listening and tell a friend and we'll catch you next episode.