Very Clinical: Dental Student Questions!

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[00:01:30] Welcome to the Very Clinical Podcast, brought to you by Zerk Dental Products. In about the time it takes to do an MO on three, we will entertain and enlighten you with tips and tricks for regular daily dentistry. Here's Kevin and Zach. What is up, Very Clinical listeners? And welcome back to yet another episode of the Very Clinical Podcast. I am Zach Miners, coming to you from Kansas City, Missouri, home of the Super Bowl losing Kansas City Chiefs.

[00:01:58] With me as always, Dr. Kevin, hair fryer Kevin. What's cracking in Cleveland, Ohio? The Browns didn't win the Super Bowl either, so we're even there. So we're even. We got another loser here. Introduce our Michigan guest. All the way from Michigan, home of the Detroit Lions. Also another Super Bowl losing team. Super Bowl losing and Super Bowl not getting to team. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was our year.

[00:02:27] And then it wasn't our year. Greetings. Thank you for having me on this illustrious, extremely dental podcast. And we've also got our very dental student host, Mo. What's up? Not a whole lot. Glad to be on. Very clinical. We have a very full lineup here. It is. I get that. I see what you did there. Our very amount of dentists.

[00:02:57] I wish you guys could see the video feed on this. It looks like Hollywood squares. Like with like a four. I don't know what your screens look like, but I have like a four pack of. Low rent Hollywood squares. So also let me describe the visuals for the viewers here. Alan used to be in this dingy, dark den, which, you know, you really questioned whether you were going to record a dental podcast or. A snuff film. You know what? Yeah. Yeah. Something sketchy. Yeah. But now he's brightened the place up.

[00:03:27] It looks like he's paid his power bill. Yeah. And everything's looking real good over there. Alan, you look nice. I can fix that. If you want to go back to the way it was, I can just do that. No, no, no. That's creepy. Nah. That's even more creepy. That's good. That's good. Like I was like Buffalo Bill there for a second. Yes. That's exactly what that looked like. Definitely the Michigan basement. Where's your skin suit? Kevin.

[00:03:52] Kevin, what do we got for a short bit tonight before we let Mo kind of own the show here with some Q&A stuff? We're going to hand over the show to Mo, but first, because he's a dental student, we're going to talk about our very first dental patient in dental school. Zach, you go first. If you're a dedicated listener, you've heard the story before, but for most of you will

[00:04:16] not have heard this, but my very first round was in oral surgery rotation, which was horrible because I did not know how to numb people, let alone take out a tooth. Were you allowed to use more than one carpule? I don't remember the rules on that. I assume so. I hope so. I think so. The first patient they gave me was a 300 pound plus African American male for number 32.

[00:04:47] Nice. I didn't have a chance. I think I would. I don't remember the x-ray, but I might refer it today. Yeah. You know, and I'm, you know, I don't think I ever got the guy numb. And I think all I did was maybe play around with an elevator on the tooth. It was a joke and it was a horrible way to get started. And the surgeon that was running the place wanted you to get the handpiece and lay the flap. And you're like, I've never worked on a person before. Yeah. It's, it was, it was dumb.

[00:05:16] It'd be like the equivalent of like your first operative patient being, or first crown rich patient being a, you know, like an eight and nine crown on a highly aesthetically demanding person or something like that. You don't have a chance of winning that. So anyway, that was terrible. It set off a horrible week and then entire oral surgery program and set me back on surgery for years. So thanks person who triaged that person for me. I don't have me. They only do. In dental school, we, we wouldn't, we didn't see any surgery patients till we were seniors

[00:05:45] and we, it was within a rotation. They were having you, was this in the oral, were you put in the oral surgery? So you just got, I mean, some people never got, didn't take out a tooth probably until maybe second semester of third year or later because you rotated slowly through surgery. The only positive of being there for surgery was that I did do a lot of shots where as opposed to I had a lot of colleagues talking about doing just exams and, you know, workups and stuff like that.

[00:06:11] So I did actually get to, you know, do some hands-on stuff, but it was, it was horrible for my mental wellbeing. It made me really question whether I even had the right stuff to do this thing. I feel that. So that's, that's my deal. All right, Alan, you're next. So, okay. I, I don't know if I probably saw patients in like oral medicine diagnosis or something like that. My first like operative patient, I remember vividly he was a, so I went to the university

[00:06:39] of Minnesota and a lot of the patients were probably like a lot of dental schools. They were older folks. And I mean, this was in the mid nineties. And so some of these people were, were older folks in the mid nineties. So they were probably born in the early 1900s. There was, I can't remember his name. I feel bad, but he was probably at the time of 75 or 80 year old. I, I think he was German. I mean, in Minneapolis, he could have been like Scandinavian, but I think he's German. The way, the reason I say that is because I, he was in pain when I was working on it and

[00:07:08] it wasn't because of what I was doing. The guy was, he was hunched over so bad. He had like osteoporosis so bad. And all he talked about, Oh, oh, this osteoporosis is killing me. Osteoporosis. I remember that vividly. And it was a rough, it was a rough appointment. And I got him numb enough. I think I, I think I was doing an anterior compositor. I'm like, that was first operative. So I, but as in many dental schools, you can't do more than one thing at a time. You certainly couldn't treat more than one tooth at a time. So I saw this guy multiple times.

[00:07:37] And the second time I saw him, I got a neck roll pillow and I was a hero. He never complained about the osteoporosis ever again. He thought it was great. So I learned a lesson. I learned a valuable lesson. I felt horrible for the guy. The guy was just dying. And I did find a neck roll pillow the second time around. Did fine. You're a nice guy. It was the first time I, first time I ever anesthetized anyone. It scared the hell out of me. So, all right, Kevin, I'll go next. You're up, Kev. So also dedicated listeners to the show will remember this story.

[00:08:07] My very first patient was a class three, I think on number seven. And, um, you know, I made the patient numb and then, uh, a class three on number seven. That prep probably took me 45 minutes or an hour or whatever, you know? Yeah, of course it did. And then, uh, I had called the instructor over to check it. And he said something like to the effect of, okay, go ahead and fill that, but make sure you keep it dry.

[00:08:35] And I said, should I use the saliva ejaculator? And he left the room cracking up and all red. I realized what I said after that happened. I think the patient was kind of smirking too. So my first patient, uh, received the saliva ejaculator. Oh, nice.

[00:09:04] Self-cure composite back in those days? Was it? Something like, no, no, I think we actually used curing lights. Yeah. Okay. So it wasn't like an A and B. What was that stuff called? Oh yeah. What was that stuff called? I don't remember. I mean, that was the first composite my dad had. You didn't even need a light because it was, it was, yeah, auto-cure. Yeah, it was auto-cure. Yeah. Yeah. It was light here. All right, Moe. What was your first patient two weeks ago? Or whatever else? Yeah.

[00:09:32] My, my first patient was actually my wife. So it wasn't, it wasn't a very crazy. Wow. Yeah. It was. Oh, you could have used the ejaculator on her. Oh, he did. Just maybe not in class. Oh, you guys. Maybe killing me. She can't get the link for this one. No. Okay. Yeah. But it wasn't anything crazy. We just, she had some failing sealants that we replaced with PRRs. Okay.

[00:10:01] That's pretty much it. But my first school patient was actually like this older Arabic speaking lady. And they gave her to me because I could speak Arabic. But what they didn't know was that I don't know like any dental terminology at all in Arabic. So, so I was like, I don't know whether to like come clean. Are they going to take this patient away from me or what? But I just did my best and it worked out. So. You probably did better than anyone else would anyway.

[00:10:31] That's true. That's true. I was going to say, probably not using the jargon. It was good for the person. You know what a tooth is. So. Yeah. Yeah. Great. I actually barely knew what a tooth was yet. Wow. That's true. Better than us. Good enough. Yep. All right, Mo. All right. Lay it on us. Set it up and lay it on us. Hit us. There we go. So what we have is we have a list of a bunch of questions that I collected from a Google

[00:10:57] form I sent out to some of my classmates and also some listeners who have reached out to me in the past. So really just going to get started going through. So Mo did more legwork for this podcast than has ever been done in the past ever. Just so we all know. Thanks, Mo. It's impressive. Yeah. I'm telling you. That's what I was able to do. And then we got a lot of redundant ones. So I went in, I used AI to clean it up. So we got, we got it down to the bare bones of what's necessary.

[00:11:27] That's funny. I'm going to use AI to answer these questions. That's right. That matches up. I am. I have DeepSeek just sitting right here. Ready. Yep. So we'll just get started with the first question. So first question is, what's your strategy for managing patients who frequently cancel or miss appointments? And we can start with, let's start with Alan. Well, it's interesting.

[00:11:55] One of the things that I have actually done, particularly if it's hygiene patients, is make it really hard for them to get back in. If they miss a hygiene appointment, they're not going to be able to get in for a long time. And that's so, and that is, we use our lack of capacity as a selling point of people not missing. If they call to cancel, it's like, you're not going to be able to get in for months. We don't have any spots and we're sort of brutal about it because, and I mean, honestly,

[00:12:23] I think that if you have capacity and hygiene, it almost, it almost tempts them to miss more often. Something like that. Like if they can, if they can just make another appointment. So that's one thing that we've done. We do. I mean, if it's someone that I really would rather chase out of the practice, I will, we, we will, you know, we'll do a fee. I, we don't do it on everyone. And it's always something that we can forgive if someone is upset about it. But I, you know, it's, it's a kind of a constant problem.

[00:12:49] I know Kevin will probably have an answer, something to the effect of prepay and you don't feel as bad when they miss, but I've even found people that when they've prepaid, they miss sometimes. So I, I have to say I haven't, because of our hygiene capacity problem, I don't have as many people missing as, as I used to. So maybe, maybe that's a good, I don't, it was sort of an unintentional way of doing it, but it's worked out okay for us. The, the way you warmed up that answer to Alan, I thought you were going to go with physical abuse.

[00:13:18] Like when you actually shake him down. We have, I mean, Saginaw is, I don't know that hitmen are, are common in Saginaw. Right. I know a few. I have some on, on retainer. On speed dial? Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's good. We, we, we break some knees first. Usually we don't go right to murder usually. So yeah. I, I stole my idea from, from Kevin or one of, partially from Kevin. We, we, we have the, the VIP list. You're so important. You can't make your appointment.

[00:13:46] So that means you're on the VIP list. Meaning we'll, we'll call you or you'll call us with a same day appointment. You know, you're so busy. Let's just see if, if something today can meet your needs. So we have a, we have a short list of, you know, people who, who, who scheduling an appointment just didn't work out for them. And we have some same day fill-ins. There's some people that don't jive with that and then they leave and that's fine. Cause they're wasting my time and money anyway.

[00:14:15] So that's that, that kind of the quote unquote VIP list, same day options been the way I've kind of handled it. I do feel a little bit like the older you get, the less you care about patients like that, that, that, that sort of weed themselves out too. Hey, it's Kate, the dental assistant, and it's time to get very clinical in this episode's very clinical corner. Are you ready, Dr. Mead? I'm ready, Kate. Great. So do you consider your team members family? I absolutely do.

[00:14:42] And you want to give them the resources to help them stay safe and perform their job well, right? Yes, I do. So tell me, how are they transporting their dirty instruments from the treatment room back to central sterilization? Good question. And of course, it depends on the procedure, but we'd like to try and cover those trays. I don't know that the, that the patient napkin is, is an approved cover, but that might be what it looks like sometimes in our practice. Right. Okay. So OSHA and CDC have recommendations on how to properly and safely transport those contaminated instruments back to central sterilization.

[00:15:12] And most practices aren't necessarily following those guidelines. Some of them are cutting corners like with a napkin or something like that. So what do we do to become compliant? It's a really simple change to become compliant and actually increase efficiency. More efficient? Yes. Containing your instruments in cassettes and then pairing them with a leap resistant and puncture proof tray and locking cover satisfy those recommendations from both CDC and OSHA. That's all we need to do? Well, you need to label the container appropriately as well.

[00:15:41] But yes, that's all that it takes. You'll be happier and safer and more efficient with this simple change. A change worth making. Right. So listeners, if you're uncertain about your office compliance, check out the show notes to learn how to practice happier, safer, and more efficient. Okay. Kevin, do you have anything to add? All right. So yeah, I have a lot to add actually, but I'm going to try to keep it brief. So I just Googled it and it doesn't exist anymore.

[00:16:06] But what we started doing back in 2008, 2009 is something called the new patient reservation system, which my wife, Missy, invented. And that is taking a credit card reservation when the new patient calls. So what that does is for the new patient, we're setting a standard. And if you don't want to comply with our standard, we're not going to see you.

[00:16:35] And so we collect credit card information just like you would reserve a hotel or a airline or rental car or in our area, some restaurants or a salon. We're collecting that information. We're never, we write it down. We're never really going to charge you. That's part of the system, but people don't break their appointments.

[00:17:01] But the point of it is we've just elevated the value of that appointment by tying some monetary value to it. And we weed out the patients that aren't going to comply. Now, as time goes on, people may break a hygiene appointment or whatever. I don't really care about those. I do care about the patients in my schedule or my associate's schedule.

[00:17:26] And those people we've collected a deposit from before they schedule. And I do want to just, I want to offer a counter to Al, which I understand why you would make it difficult for someone to come back. But I don't really care if we have time tomorrow. Let's see you tomorrow. Because I want to. Oh, no, I literally don't have the capacity.

[00:17:53] Like, it isn't that I'm making it hard for, it literally is hard for people to get in because we're booked up. Yeah. Okay. I get it. I would be, I would be rotten enough to say, but I'm not actually, it's just literally that's, I just don't have the capacity. So people miss, they're not gonna be able to get in for a while. Yeah. I get that. Okay. No, I'm with you though, Kevin. I mean, we've had people sometimes where they miss and then I see them in the next day. But it's just like, you know, that's preferable to there being no person. Correct. Yeah.

[00:18:21] I'm not in the business of trying to teach people a lesson to. Correct. And something Alan said earlier was at some point, I don't really care. Yeah. You can either call me or you don't. I don't, I'm not gonna, I'm not in a, I'm not, I don't want to punish anyone. That's not my. I will say if they're, cause the original question is like people who, who don't show up a lot. Yeah.

[00:18:47] I don't, after a while, I really, what bugs me is when the team puts them back in, like they're just racing to put them back in. I'm like, these people don't show up. Like, like that. So, I mean, I'm not in a rush to get them back in. Like you said, Zach, if you can get them in same day or whatever, and you've got a spot for them. Great. But, but like, I don't know that I'm in a huge rush to get them rescheduled when they cancel that way. Yep. All right. What do you got Mo? Okay. Perfect. The next one's kind of a heavy one. What, how do you determine whether a tooth is restorable or not?

[00:19:18] Zach, how about you start us off? Um, well, how much money do they have? No, it's a bad way. So I'm sorry. That's a tough, tough answer. Um, well, I mean, there's a, I think we all have, you know, a bit of a, an algorithm we go through in terms of, uh, periodontal stability, um, endodontic lesions, you know, like size of endodontic lesion.

[00:19:45] And, you know, if it's a crack tooth, we're looking at depth of crack. Um, I, it really, there's so many different scenarios there that it's hard to give a blanket, um, a blanket answer for restorability for, um, I mean, uh, some of it will depend on maybe

[00:20:12] your own, you know, skill level as a practitioner. A hundred percent it does. Yeah. Um, some of it will depend on maybe, do you know the patient well enough to know, is this the kind of person you want to gamble with something, maybe slightly more herodontic on or not? Um, I mean, truth be told, I am sure that Al and I probably save a few more teeth than Kevin would because we're not implant placers. And so I think it puts you in a little bit of a pressure position. You're like, man, I got to do something for this person, especially if it's like front tooth or something.

[00:20:42] I mean, I can think of just a couple of teeth recently. I'm like, Kevin wouldn't be saving this tooth. Here I am slaving away at it. It'd probably be more predictable to do an implant, but this is what I've got. This is the tool I've got in my shed. So predictable. I think some of it is the word predictable is the word. And, and I, my suspicion is Kevin's definition of restorable has changed as he's become more of a surgeon. Sure. It's like, like the reality is, is like, if you, if you have the capacity to do that,

[00:21:09] particularly in, in the office, practically the same day, it definitely makes a different animal. Um, I am probably more, I'm, I am certainly no stranger to herodonics. And there are times when I actually kind of enjoy that, except for like predictability. You can't lose your head. You want to, uh, and you know, my best friend Bart always says, you know, are you going to be mad at me? If that's, that's, that's, I've used, it's a good question. I've heard that line so many times. It's a good question to ask. After learning it, it's a damn good line. It is.

[00:21:39] They don't, they won't remember it, but it is for the moment. It's a good, Kevin laughs because he knows it right. Uh, but, but at least at the moment they, the patient understands that like, this might not, this might not be the winner. Um, I, and, and I, the one thing too, about predictability, I feel like I am, I am doing an indirect more quickly than I used to also in the same way that Kevin probably is more, is quicker to not save a tooth and go to an implant.

[00:22:07] I go to an indirect a little quicker than I used to. I can do a pretty decent, great, big feeling, but honestly, they never look as good as a crown on recall. And they just, so, so yeah, it's, it'll change over your life. It really depends on the kind of practice you're in. And also you're, it depends on your skillset. Kevin, did I, did I answer for you? No, I, I'm actually going to take a little different tack on this. And go back to our, uh, VOD series. Well, we asked those series of questions about, you know, if the tooth needs an endo

[00:22:36] plus a crown lengthening plus a crown, you know, where do you draw the line? So I think that kind of is a little bit, you know, what Zach said in a way. Um, but I think that restorability, you know, there's two tracks are going to go down. Like, are you good at endo? And is that go into the, into the mix?

[00:23:02] Cause if you're not good at endo and you think every tooth needs an extraction and implant, then you're probably wrong. Um, but also if you're trying to be a hero for everything, that's probably wrong too. So. No, you're going to, you're going to get some losses on that. And, you know, big, big time. And so. From experience. Both Alan and Zach are right. I'm more apt to extract and graft the tooth and replace it with an implant now.

[00:23:29] Um, but you know, we do a fair amount of endo and crown. It's when you get to endo and you need to, you know, remove some thumb tissue or like, I remember when we talked to Brian McGue about these multi-rooted teeth that have, you know, that can be problematic in the long haul. So it's a very difficult question to answer unless you're, you've seen a volume of patients

[00:23:59] that at a volume of situations. Unfortunately, your failures, personal failures are going to define the way you ultimately treat and plan a lot of those things. And just today, just this afternoon, there was a tooth that was really on the edge and it was a younger guy. And I was like, I'll just do the endo and we'll see what happens. You know? Yeah. But it, even he said, you mean you don't have to take this tooth out? I'm like, no, I think we can save it. Great. Okay.

[00:24:28] Good thoughts there. Okay. Next question is, what's your protocol for handling emergency cases? Like acute pulpitis or an abscess? What do you guys do? Yeah. So I think that that can be the, a profit center and a lifeblood of your practice and

[00:24:51] make a lifelong fan of your practice to get someone out of pain and, and help them out. So again, I'll go back to today. We had an hour open in the schedule. This guy had called in the morning or maybe yesterday afternoon, but we got him in today. That guy was in excruciating pain. Number 14.

[00:25:16] Um, you know, I did, I initiated an endo and we prepped it for a crown and we'll finish everything up in two or three weeks. So, um, I think the answer is learn how to do endo. So I didn't learn how to take out teeth. Yes. You know, I mean, pain, pain control is, that's a good point. You know, pain control is, I feel like that's just, that's something you should be able to do.

[00:25:44] And, and the, the, the endo part, I was pretty good out of the gate, but the extraction part, I was not and getting better at that and being able to handle that. Like, that's just, I feel like that's a core part of the gig. I, I, I know plenty of dentists that don't do blood. They don't do anything below the zombie apocalypse dental dentist. That's what Anthony Gonzalez's term zombie apocalypse. Be proficient at getting a tooth out with a minimal armamentarium.

[00:26:12] And I would also say doing a pulpectomy on the fly is a zombie apocalypse thing. You don't have to instrument the entire tooth to get that patient is still going to be feeling great. If you can get a bunch of the gunk out of there, just, I mean, if you don't have a lot of time, diagnosis is obviously really important for endo, but a lot of times when a person is freaking dying in pain, it's probably one of two things. And the answer is open the tooth up either way. So sure. The, the other tricky part though, can be depending on how full a schedule is. Yeah.

[00:26:42] It can be difficult sometimes to both of those procedures are not popular amongst dentists because extractions and endo can both go very smoothly or very shitty. And when it goes shitty, it really can really can mess up a day. If you've got a bunch of other things scheduled, that's, I think one of the tougher parts of handling the whole thing. Um, okay. So the other thing that I've learned, um, for pain control, if you can't do, if you

[00:27:09] can't operate on the patient immediately, or if the, or if they can't come in right away and you know their health history and you know them, um, man, like a, like a Medral dose pack can go a long ways to really alleviate it. It's like a strong anti-inflammatory. That's a short, short term. That's a, that's a big winner in a lot of cases for, for stuff like that. So that's it. Well, and, and sometimes you are going to have to resort to like a antibiotic pain med kind of thing too.

[00:27:36] I mean, shoot, the other day there was a person who needed an endo, but it was, it was through a bridge. It was a curved tooth. Like, I mean, maybe I could have, maybe in hindsight, I could have opened it up and at least gotten into it. But I really dislike starting those things that I don't feel like I have any chance of finishing well, or maybe not even starting well. So you got to keep that, some of that in your back pocket also, because even if you're good at endo, there's going to be some that aren't going to be up your alley. I mean, what would you do, Kevin?

[00:28:06] You can build a strong practice by knowing how to extract and graft teeth and knowing how to do endo and getting people out of pain. That's, it's important. And it's, it's bread and butter. You, you're always going to have emergencies in your practice. It's important. So yeah. Well, and you know, in some cases, um, handling just, you know, one emergency can, can, can get you the rest of the case, you know, can not always some of those people are, they're not, you're not going to see them until their next toothache, but there's sometimes where,

[00:28:35] you know, if you are the winner, you're the hero in that scenario, you're, you're going to get the rest of the case and maybe another family member. So, you know, pain control has a lot of value. Yep. But what else you got, Mo? Let's get one more in before we call it. Yeah. Great thoughts there. Uh, last one, uh, for this episode is how to deal with burnout in dentistry. I know there's something, um, Alan's talked about before on the Alan Mead experience. So why don't we start with you, Alan? Well, I mean, unfortunately, okay.

[00:29:05] Alan's burnout right now. What are you talking about? Exactly. Listen, I, um, it's funny because burnout, some people think it's something that only happens to people that aren't taking good care of themselves. I think, I think it's kind of bound to happen to almost anyone. If you do the same thing over and over again, long enough, you kind of get burned out from it. Sometimes, sometimes, you know, burnout simply means you need a break. You need to, you need to go on vacation. You need to do something that's not dentistry. That's, that's, that's one sort of burnout.

[00:29:32] Long-term career ending burnout might be a little different than, man, I need a vacation. Something like that. I mean, like Zach and Kevin go skiing and do you feel less burned out when you're done skiing? Oh, I didn't realize how much I needed that ski trip. Interesting. No, that's vacation's good. The vacation's good stuff, but, but that's not a, that's not necessarily a cure. I mean, that's like a, that's a bandaid. It's a bandaid. It's a good bandaid. A damn good bandaid.

[00:30:00] The one that I would recommend, but like, no, you're my, I mean, my solution, my solution recently, and I have to tell you, one of the reasons I'm struggling right now is because the weather is not, I, I mean, if the weather allows, I ride my bike every day. And, and frankly, that's the cure for me. That's the cure for me. I can go away for a little while and not think about anything but that, but it's been too cold and too crappy to ride my bike. And honestly, I can tell, I can tell it's, I can tell that like I'm miserable. With that.

[00:30:29] I mean, back in the day, I used to use drugs and alcohol to do it. That's, it's not a great healthy coping mechanism. It is for a lot of people what they do, but I, I don't recommend it. It doesn't work out for long-term exercising, you know, finding something you like to do and doing it, whether that's, you know, exercise or, you know, whatever is probably part of the solution. Dentistry is hard and it sucks sometimes. Anyone who says, well, I've loved every day of dentistry in my life. I think they're probably lying to you because it's, it's a hard, it's a hard job and it's,

[00:30:59] it's a lot. So, I mean, go ahead, Jack. No, no, no, please. So I want to expound on what Alan said. First of all, I never wanted to be the guy that hates his job, but that doesn't mean I don't hate it sometimes. Yeah. Okay. But I don't want to be that miserable guy at a party or dinner. Like I hate my job. Like my brother-in-law is kind of like that. He's a pharmacist. You know, I don't like being around that.

[00:31:28] So I do love my job. I do love what we've built. I do love what we've done, but I think the key to not being burned out and hating all of it is stuff like this, where we have an outside interest, where we're doing a podcast or, um, Ellen's biking or Zach is boating and skiing. Also, um, you know, the, the teaching stuff I do, you give, you get a different angle on

[00:31:56] everything and that, and also being around younger people kind of, you know, invigorates me. Right. Now I thought you were going to go a different route with this, Kevin, because one of the things I've, I've admired about you and, and, and some of the other 3d guys is what I think you guys do is you find stuff that you do like, and then find a way to do more of that. Yeah.

[00:32:22] And somehow less of the stuff that you don't want to do that, that, that kind of, that kind of sucks. I mean, I, I saw two patients today and we, it was great. You still killed it. I'm sure. Yeah. I watched it today on two patients. Sure. I'm sure you did. And, um, you know, and you, obviously you, you've got a recipe for how to do that. And if I wanted that or Alan wanted that, we know where to get that, you know, for sure.

[00:32:47] And so, um, you know, cause a quadrant of composites is a hard thing to love. You know, even if you, even if you don't mind doing fillings, man, if you do enough of those, yuck, you know? Uh, although I, sometimes I think some of the burnout doesn't have to do with the actual procedures. It's the people, it's the staff, it's the questions, it's all that stuff.

[00:33:13] Um, I'll tell you what keeps me from getting burnt out on anything though, is when you think about that at the end of the day, you get to work inside, you're not digging it. You're not digging ditches. Oh, and, uh, not shoveling mulch. You're not shoveling mulch. You're not shoveling mulch. I've shoveled some mulch and, and this is better. Every day of dentistry is better than that. In many cases, you don't have, uh, you know, you don't have someone higher. I mean, we all instaur our patients, but like in a lot of cases we're, we're, we're running the show.

[00:33:41] So, you know, so there has to be a little bit of perspective. There's yeah. There's some suck parts of dentistry, man. I feel like it could be a whole lot worse a lot of the time. And so a little perspective helps out, helps out quite a bit. Gratitude is, gratitude's a, can take care of a lot of problems too. Just gratitude. Having some perspective and understanding where you're coming from and understanding that it makes a big difference. And also being around people that understand you.

[00:34:07] I mean, I, I love the relationship that Zach and Alan and I have and not being around super negative people all the time. Cause that just drags you down, man. No, that, no, that's nice. Like, you know, like I feel like most of the conversations I have with, with you guys and with, uh, you know, another online group that we, that we have is, um, sure. There's the people spout off some things that suck. They do. Absolutely. And that's great. Get it off your chest. Get it off your chest.

[00:34:34] But then for the most part, everyone's, you know, having a pretty good time, you know, with life and whatnot. And so that's, that's, that's good to have. It is nice to have a sounding board though. And if you are down, they'll pick you up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, you know, you, you were having a beast of a day the other day, Kevin. Hopefully we inject a little positivity in there. So yeah. Yeah. And also hearing about your beast of a day made my day better. Cause I was made my bed. I was like, Oh, well, I'm not bad.

[00:35:02] My day's actually quite good considering I didn't break anything. Yeah. I didn't, I don't have broken loops. I didn't like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's good to hear. Still broken. Oh no. I feel like, I feel like I can kind of relate to that. Cause I mean, dental school, I mean, you definitely had a grind dental school. And if, if you didn't have your group of friends, I don't know how you would make it through. So I can definitely relate to that as well.

[00:35:29] It was, it was very good to have a good group of rows in dental school. It was very, and, and yet I was still pretty negative, I think at dental school, but we had a pretty good time. We laughed a lot, but it was, it was like, yeah, that's what I remember now is the last. Yeah, I do too. I do too. I remember times when I'd go to lunch. Uh, that was the other thing too. We had lunch. And so you always had someone to go to lunch with and someone always wanted to go to lunch. And I remember laughing so hard.

[00:35:57] We cried a lot of times and it wasn't probably the stuff wasn't all that funny. It was probably like, it was, it seemed funny because of the ridiculous situation we were in with dental school. A lot of humor. Yeah. But I think Kevin, Kevin made a great point though. I'll tell you one of the main cures to burnout is having a group of people you talk to, whether that's an in-person group, whether that's an online group, just somebody, you know, to bounce, bounce stuff off of.

[00:36:24] Because I mean, the office can be kind of a lonely place, you know, sometimes, even though you're surrounded by patients and staff, they don't get you, you know, so it's nice to have those peeps. Perfect. All right. On that. Let's wrap. Okay. Go ahead. I was just going to say on that note, we'll, uh, we'll wrap up and catch you guys next time. Yep. Um, so we'll see ya. See ya. See ya.