Summary

This week Dr. House and Shawn are talking about PPE, social distancing and all of the considerations you’re juggling in your practice as you are adapting to dentistry post COVID-19.

Dr. House discusses how her practice and team have adapted to the new guidelines given by the ADA. She discusses how her practice specifically is protecting staff and patients through safety protocols and social distancing.

At the same time, this discussion acknowledges that while the basic guidelines are there, how you choose to practice social distancing and implement protocols is dependent on your specific patient population and up to your professional judgment. Dentists are highly trained in infection control and in assessment and are able to make personal and professional decisions for their offices that reflect their patients’ and staff’s specific needs.

With such a frequent need for adaptation, there are a lot of obligations and conflicting interests weighing on your shoulders. Dentists want to practice dentistry well, and they also want be safe as they protect staff and patients from this virus. But the need for additional PPE and possibly even changes to your physical space is a huge financial stress as money needs to be invested in a time when income was just cut drastically during quarantine. Furthermore, social distancing and new safety guidelines are a huge organizational challenge. They have changed how many offices are laid out, as well as how many patients you can see in a given day. It’s a lot to manage, but dentists are encouraged to find creative and personalized solutions that fit your practice.

Additionally, there’s the daunting challenge of guiding staff through the many changes in your office and procedures. A great way to get buy-in from your staff is through involving them in the creation of these new protocols. Also, some patients might be struggling with the changes in your office. You probably have patients on all ends of the spectrum ranging from those who are fearful to come in for a necessary procedure, to those who feel that their freedoms are threatened by the many changes in their world. Everyone has their own story and a valid point of view. There is tremendous value in taking time to listen to your patients and in giving grace to anyone who might see things differently than you do.

Lastly, Allison and Shawn discuss PPE and the difficulty in obtaining what is needed to be able to practice safely. They offer helpful tips and Allison shares how she is improvising to comply with safety recommendations.

Dentistry was hard enough before a global pandemic hit you, but you are strong and resilient. While adapting to this new normal may be stretching you like never before, we believe that you can get through this and this conversation with both uplift you and encourage you to keep going. We’re all in this together!

Full Transcript Below

Shawn (00:58):

Hey guys, this is Shawn and Allison with the authentic dentist podcast and today is May 22nd and we’re currently three weeks in now to the new normal.

Allison

I’ve been in the practice three weeks now seeing patients. So we just want to talk about what’s been going on because as we were just discussing, this really isn’t something you’ve ever had to walk through and any dentists in this generation has had to walk through.

Shawn

And there’s something about giving yourself that, I don’t know, almost like acknowledgement. Like you’re not dead, your practice hasn’t burned down. We don’t know how bad things are, but like you’re getting through it and there’s hope.

Allison (01:44):

There’s absolutely hope. But the difference between my practice in February and my difference in the by practice today is, is significant. And I have had to take a minute and just mourn that I can’t practice the way I used to practice. You know, and my team is not happy about that either. It’s, it’s been really hard. So in what ways

Shawn (02:08):

Specifically do you feel like there’s that marked difference? So again, February, earlier this year, no pandemic, no idea that there’s going to be a pandemic. No one’s preparing for anything. It’s business as usual, which is dentistry is tough. There’s always the challenges that come with dentistry. Just because it’s dentistry. Then now throw the pandemic onward three weeks after that. How, what are you mourning the loss of?

Allison (02:40):

It’s hard to really put a finger on it. I just, there’s a heaviness. I mean I would say this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through in my professional life. Hands down the most difficult. And I started my practice from scratch and this has just been every day there’s new information. Every day I’ve had to make a change and that’s just really, it’s really hard to be that adaptable. It’s really hard to get my team to be that flexible. But we are doing it and I have this, this hope that at the end we will come out stronger. I keep coming back to you know, it’s like I threw a bomb in my practice and now I can make whatever I want to out of it. I have to follow the rules, but I can do whatever I want to now.

Shawn (03:32):

So we, before we get to like the hope, cause I, I totally believe the hopes there. It’s interesting when I ask you like what is, what is it that your morning and, and like even just observing you, trying to define it like dentistry as an organism has been evolving and moving fast, whether it’s insurance changes the complexity and competition TSOs have brought. But with this pandemic, the rate at which changes happened, that’s the thing. It every day it’s something different and it’s moving at such a rapid pace that this new normal doesn’t have definition and that’s going to be so difficult because even though debt dentistry was difficult three months ago and four months ago, right now, it’s difficult in a way that you don’t even know how to qualify.

Allison (04:28):

So yes, the ADA gave us a really nice guideline on what we should do in order to keep patients safe and to keep us safe. So my team came back and we created these protocols and I do have to say that having my team help me do it was very, it was good. There was a lot of buy in from them that they wanted to be part of it. And I didn’t just hand them because anytime you just hand somebody a list of rules, they just naturally want to rebel.

Shawn (04:58):

But what made you do that? Like is that something you learned earlier? Just kind of in your practice, the importance of inviting your team into that or like what, what even inspired you to do that?

Allison (05:09):

I think my personality is very collaborative and I felt like this was a big deal. The changes we had to make were huge in terms of patients had to wait before they could come in. So I can’t have more than one person in my lobby of a very small lobby. I have somebody that escorts each patient, takes their temperature, escorts the patient into the room and does the whole covert questions to make sure that they’re healthy. And then my hygienist comes in. So there’s been all these protocols and then I have to make sure that if there’s someone else in the office that the doors are shut. Oh, I put doors on. We didn’t have doors before on every op, on every op.

Shawn (05:52):

Are they temporary? Nope. So you, you had, what one of the

Allison (05:59):

You know, your practice that, I want to say architects, but one of the companies that has done renovations to your practice come in? Nope. I just hired somebody. Yeah. Oh. And I didn’t get permission either from my landlord, but it’s under a certain amount. And in my lease it says that I can do that. Why did, and they’re glass doors, they’re not anything major. They’re very tiny and you can see through them. So it doesn’t look like everything’s closed up. Okay. But I just felt like the office was so open and patients, I didn’t want patients to see each other. I didn’t want them to hear each other. I didn’t want them to feel like they were in close proximity to anyone else. So now that wasn’t something that was explicitly handed down from the ADA. It was more of like you feel from what you understand about infection control or aerosols that it would probably, they did say that we had to do something to separate chairs.

Allison (06:54):

Okay. So if you had an open Bay concept, which is not quite what I had, you had to do something. Putting doors probably wasn’t what was recommended. I think there was some plexiglass that was discussed, you had to do something to separate people. But because of my particular group of people that come in, I have a lot of older patients and a lot of medically compromised patients and I just felt like I needed to be a little further. You don’t, I’ve seen your practice and I know your ops are independent, but yet I’ve been in, I went to a pediatric dentist for my kids and they had five chairs just all next to each other in an open area. So they’re being advised to at minimum put some sort of plexiglass something. Wow. And, and that’s really hard. It’s expensive at a time. We haven’t made any money.

Allison (07:46):

Okay. So to comply with some of the protocols that are being, whether it’s mandated or suggested, it requires some sort of investment when dentists don’t have, you know, have just had their income drastically cut and now they’re having to invest to come up to these standards in some ways. So it’s worse than that. You can’t get the PPE that you need. The personal protective equipment, I call my supply rep and they don’t have it. They don’t have any disposable gowns, they don’t have any [inaudible] and you can’t practice without something. So that’s been really difficult too. So it’s so, I mean that’s, that’s the reality of when something like this happens. So theoretically it’s like, okay, we have a date when we can reopen. And that should mean it’s kind of back to business as usual in a modified way, except that the infrastructure suffered so much that the actual materials and supplies you need to be able to practice safely.

Allison (08:56):

It’s not accessible and it’s like no one’s thinking that a core part that’s going to allow you to move forward. Now all of a sudden you just can’t get like even you haven’t, you had to improvise with couns. So yes, I did. The good news is that in March I saw that we were probably going to need gowns, so I ordered some, so I did have enough gowns and then my supplier did get me one more set. I’ll be out of gowns on Monday, or excuse me on Tuesday, but I hired a seamstress and bought material. It came and I’m having surgical gowns made because I don’t need a level three surgical gown. I don’t have to be sterile. I’m not doing a hips or a hip replacement or delivering a baby. No, not doing any of that. I’m doing dentistry and so I just need something as a barrier that’s not thin the way my my scripts are.

Allison (09:51):

So if any of you out there are listening in, you’re hoping for that silver bullet. Unfortunately, Alison, or should I say Dr. House just gave you a solution, but it takes a lot of work finding a seamstress, finding even the plans, right? I mean, what do you get? Download the plans. The patterns, excuse me, the pattern, you have to stitch it together. We did a trial run with just a plastic material and found that it was too big. So we modified it. Then we ordered the real material, which took a while to find, Oh my God, it finally arrived and the seamstresses working and Wednesday I should have gowns. Wow. Did I run out? Wants to follow in that path. I’m sure they just reach out to you on Facebook. Sure. Meaning cause they might have questions, maybe you can hand them the pattern. Happy.

Allison (10:43):

I’m happy to share anything. Really. We’re all in this together and I want all of us to succeed because we have to, I mean, dentistry can’t just die. What will happen if none of us can practice? So that’s the other weird thing that’s happened. My practice is booming. People are upset because they can’t get in. I have to social distance so people are spread out. So I can only see so many people a day. And the need is huge. I mean, I’ve been closed for six weeks. So production wise or maybe I shouldn’t say production. Normal efficiency, like let’s say again, for those listening, I’m not a dental professional, I don’t work in an op, I don’t know these things. If you normally were seeing 20 patients a day, what we you normally think that’s a say in February? Yeah. Let’s say 22 patients a day maybe.

Allison (11:35):

Okay. Now with the pace of things, with the way you have to go through it, is it like a quarter of that? Is it half of that? So the first week we decided we were only gonna to see 10 patients a day. A day. Okay. So we, and we, I have four operatories. So I had one hygienist work and we flipped between operatories. I brought in my assistant that used to work with me became a hygiene assistant completely. So she helped her turn the rooms over pro walk the patient and walk the patient out. And the reason I did that was because that first week we talked to patients. I shouldn’t say we talked, we listened to patients. They had a lot to say. Everyone had a big story and it was really important that we had them tell us their story and share their fears and listen to all of the things that are happening to them.

Allison (12:30):

And that took time. So we were running about an hour, 15 under an hour and 20 minutes for a cleaning. And because of compared to, I would say we normally get done in maybe 50 55 minutes. So we turn over the room and, but it was much longer and the ability to have the assistant take some time off of us in some way in the beginning or the end of the appointment so that my hygienists wasn’t freaking out helped a lot. Okay. So just from a numbers perspective, like let’s say the efficiency at which you’re operating is reduced by 20 to 25% the cost for everyone to have the correct equipment has now gone up. Maybe let’s say 15% I have no idea. But you’re not passing on that expense to the patient because reimbursements haven’t changed. Have they? They have not changed. Okay. So this seems mathematically problematic.

Allison (13:27):

Oh, of course. Yes. This is terrible. But I’m calling it phase two. So phase one was they shut me down and I was only allowed to see emergencies and I didn’t have the, all the PPE that I needed during the pandemic, but it wasn’t such an issue I think because every night walked in, had been completely isolated. Nobody was working. It was, it was very safe. So I wasn’t really as concerned. Now that things are opened up, which was May 1st I am more concerned about transmission because I do have people that have gone back to work coming into the practice. So now I’m keeping everybody really far apart. And then during phase one, I’m seeing like one patient, maybe two a day of emergencies. I mean, it wasn’t anything major, right? So we decided we would do 10 patients a day for the first week we did the hygiene because people were freaking out that they didn’t get hygiene, they really needed their teeth cleaned.

Allison (14:26):

And then I saw two patients. And yeah, it was really difficult to try and manage keeping everybody away from each other, making sure that the protocols were met. I actually wrote myself a sheet that goes with every patient. It’s a piece of paper, but the assistant holds it. The patient doesn’t. Okay. Where we would do a checklist. So I knew that everything was being done because it’s too, it’s too much to mentally add to the list of like, am I in compliance or you just don’t want to make you, you can’t afford to miss a step. That’s important. And I also feel like if you’re learning a new skill, you need a cheat sheet. And this is a totally new skill. So I wrote it and then my team, when we met, they rewrote it. But that was great because then they were on board and they also showed me, you know, well that’s not possible so we can fix it.

Allison (15:23):

So now we have three of them. There’s one for restorative, there’s one for hygiene, and there’s one for a new patient on what these sheets look like. So we’re learning every day. We’re learning. I did set aside time every day for the first week to talk. So there was a two hour meeting every day where we could go, okay, what worked, what didn’t work, can we try this? Because they needed to know how we were going to get back to normal. This is just like organizationally, like, like again, it’s this organism that just keeps on changing and it, it is daily. Like it was hourly the first week because we’d be like, Oh no, that doesn’t work. How are we going to do this? And then we couldn’t make the thermometer work. That was really entertaining. The forehead. Yeah. My new thermometer came yesterday and I was never so excited to have a thermometer.

Allison (16:20):

It was funny. I’ve ordered three. One has finally come a month later. So what are you supposed to do in the event that someone has that, what is the temperatures at a hundred 0.2 or a hundred 0.4 they can’t be over. We decided it was 99 Oh yeah. If I’m 99.4 you say come back when you don’t have a temperature. No, because remember you might have a tooth abscess that has given you an infection. Okay. So you can’t just, you have to use your professional judgment. If somebody comes in, they have a major toothache and they have a slight fever, well then you need to ask all the other questions. Okay. So that you can figure this out. So it’s, it’s not quite as black and white as everyone thinks. You’ve got to really think about every single person, I’m sorry, like mentally, this is just so much to handle.

Allison (17:08):

So if you’re out there and you are overwhelmed, I’m so overwhelmed. The first week I just went home and I was so exhausted. So the [inaudible] are horrible. They’re horrible to wear. So I decided that I was going to have a mask fitter made. So I use Bella’s 3d to scan my face and I don’t know, in case that’s not in case, why wait, I kind of forgot anyway. Like meaning what is that in case people don’t know? Okay. sorry. A level three mask and an [inaudible] have very similar filtration. So the issue with a regular surgical level three that we would normally wear, it isn’t seal to your face. And that’s where the [inaudible] has come in. Okay. Everybody wants to have an end 95 right. But they’re hard to breathe in and they don’t fit your face perfectly, so you need to be fitted for it.

Allison (18:06):

Okay, well, I mean we’re just trying to to survive here right now. So a mask fitter, you just scan your face and it’s a acrylic piece that your dental lab can make that fits your face. Exactly. So you put it over your level three mask to seal it. Awesome. And that has been very comfortable. I have to say I, I like it even better than when I practiced without one because my glasses don’t fog up. I’ve really decided that I like them. And you can get your lab that file by using the app. You download the app Bellis 3d and scan your face. I think it’s like 99 cents. I think that’s amazing. Like talk about a remarkable solution when level three masks are easier to come by than a 90 fives I’m not saying that they still haven’t gone out of stocks or in places, but like you said, they don’t fog up your loops the same exact way.

Allison (18:57):

And if you’re doing your clinical procedures, you, you need to have visibility. So I was talking to my son about this and the ethics of all of it because the reality is I have three competing things. I still want to do beautiful dentistry and take good care of patients from a clinical standpoint, but I have to wear all the PPE because I’m required to legally and I don’t want to get sick and I don’t want to get somebody else sick and I still have to make enough money to pay the bills. So these things are not enough money to pay the bills. You’re hurting your team, which is like your family and they’re trusting you. You know what I’m saying? Like they’ve given the provision for their families to the vocation with you. So totally makes sense if you’re compromising your clinical excellence because of all of a sudden I’m trying to keep my patients safe with all these PBE mandates, but that’s compromising the care they’re getting.

Allison (19:57):

Gosh, so you’re Jordan with all these things at once. All these things. It’s, it’s an emotionally difficult thing to do. And I know that every dentist out there is feeling this, this overwhelming what is going to happen next? And I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m calling this phase two. And I’m telling my patients that it’s phase two also because I’m not charging a PPE fee, although I think that we should. That’s a great idea. I think we have to at some point, because it’s costing us so much money and so much time, but I haven’t figured out how to implement that. I don’t have the language to do that yet. So that’s something I’m working on now. My marketing brain is already starting to go because you know, if it’s positioned in some perk, that’s better for the patient. Like, do you know what I’m saying?

Allison (20:50):

It’s almost like a standards that you have. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a way of positioning it that it just makes sense where it’s like, Oh no, I want to go to a dentist that has this standard and if I have to pay for it, that’s fine. So I have a really good friend who always says, you’re only as ethical as you can afford to be. And it’s a terrible thing, but it’s so true. You know, if you cannot pay your bills, you cannot order and 95 masks. Well, nobody wins in that situation. Your patients don’t win. They want you to stay around. It’s kind of like sometimes you know, a lot of times the restaurant industry gets hit when all of a sudden consumers expect healthier ingredients, right? So for those that try to get healthier ingredients, but don’t change the price on the menu, I’m like, look, I would rather you go raise your prices 20% then go out of business.

Allison (21:47):

Because if I come back in three months and all of a sudden you’re not there because you couldn’t do business that way, you’re not doing me a service I liked frequent in your place, just stay in business and whatever that takes, that’s reasonable. It’s doesn’t help anybody when you have to close your doors. So if anything, I would say this pandemic has made me realize we are so valuable and for whatever reason we were discounted as not essential. And sometimes we just don’t see ourselves as so valuable. But you just said how important that restaurant is. What we do is so valuable and we need to stop discounting that and making it so it’s not important. We keep people safe and we want to do beautiful dentistry. You know? And you just said something a few minutes back that I feel like just bears repeating.

Allison (22:34):

Like the new way of looking at this is we are in this together and together we’re stronger and together we’re going to be able to keep getting through this. So you’ve alluded to phase one send the books. Phase two is here. What do you feel like phase three is going to look like? Do you think that is going to be the new normal? Hopefully we’re all of a sudden actually don’t think phase three will be the new normal. So I, I’m looking at it the same way that we looked at HIV, even though I was a child during that, but I remember that when I went to my dentist, there was all of a sudden a lot of barriers. He was wearing gloves, there was some differences. So when HIV hit, we didn’t have enough information about it. So a lot of dentists went overboard, and you probably don’t even know this, but there was a dentist in Florida that actually injected people with his own blood and gave HIV to patients.

Allison (23:28):

Well, we didn’t know that at the time. So dentists were very afraid. Patients were very afraid. It didn’t help dentistry out did it. It really didn’t. So a lot of standards came along that perhaps really needed to happen. It’s true, but some things came along that didn’t stay like the face shield, the face shield was introduced back then and for whatever reason, most of us don’t wear that now. The surgical cap was back then and we don’t, we don’t wear it now. So some of the things we’re doing, we don’t know if it’s what we need to do. We’re doing it because it’s an overabundance of caution and I think our patients need to know that we did something different because we shut down the world. I mean, we shut down the world. Your office needs to reflect that. Yeah. The other thing I have to share is patients have been all over the board about this because of their political beliefs and it’s been really hard to manage. You know, some people will come in and they’re so afraid. I mean, they’re just shaking. They don’t want to take off their masters for me to look at their teeth, which, yeah, so really they’re very afraid. Are they hoping that there’s some technology that allows you to treat their mouth with a mascot? They’re in pain. They know that something has to be done, but they are afraid.

Shawn (24:48):

Okay. And I’m not laughing at the fear. I’m laughing at how silly it ends up coming across. But I understand that everyone is in a different place and it doesn’t make sense to caricature that fear because fear is absolutely real to so many people.

Allison (25:05):

And for some people the fear is absolutely justified. You know, if you have a double lung transplant, you probably should be afraid. I totally get that. But some people are afraid that don’t need to be afraid. And so that’s, that’s harder. And then you have the other side of people who just walk in and they’re so angry that I’ve changed the office. I mean they’re swearing, they can’t believe that the government has doing this. And it doesn’t seem to matter if they’re Republican or Democrat. It’s the government that’s doing this to them and they just go bananas that were taking away their freedom. And I can, there’s, with both groups, I have to have a conversation. This is medicine. We’re different. How you are in the world is different than how you are in my office. How I am in the world is different than how I am in the office and the office. I have an obligation to keep everyone safe and you know, I’m keeping you safe from TB and HIV and those were very likely that you were going to get out in the world. Right? But in my office I had to be much more careful.

Shawn (26:07):

And science doesn’t care about your political views, meaning like infection control in like pathogens. They don’t care whether you’re mocking them or whether they’re, you’re afraid of them. Like you’re not looking at it from some emotional or political view. You’re looking at it from the fact that you’re liable and you need to do what you can to make it safe for everybody, regardless of people’s political views. And I know early on I realized you’re going to have people on both extremes, people that are going to mock it and say, Hey look, this isn’t that big a deal. My grandparents survived this. You know, because it’s kind of like, it’s like when you have your fourth

Allison (26:44):

Or fifth child for those that have lots of kids. Yes, I have five. Evan, you see someone with their first child, you know the pacifier drops and they freak out and they spray it down and they wash it before they put it back in the child’s mouth. And you’re like, yeah, that was me with my first child. And then with their fifth, you’re just like, eh, just put it back in. Like it’ll, it’ll build their immunity. But it doesn’t mean that you should, like, it doesn’t mean that you should be walking like that. And it also doesn’t mean that it makes sense to be fearful. And that’s why, you know, one of the messages we always want to have is just like, just give grace to those that are in a different place than you, because we don’t always know why they’re the way they are.

Allison (27:25):

And some people’s disposition is just to be a lot more fearful. And if that’s the case, then give them space to do that. And you probably have to do that with your patients. I’ve tried to give it to everyone. Everyone has a story. Some of their stories are terrible. They know somebody who died. Oh man. And some of their stories are, you know, I’ve survived everything. My family’s lives to a hundred nothing’s going to get me down. And all of those are valid. All of those are true. And I, I found that out I had to do was listen, just listen to every person and that’s part of the time issue. Everybody has a story and they want to tell you and it’s important that we hear it. So were you expecting that? I was expecting more talking. I was expecting to spend a lot of time educating cause that’s what I like to do.

Allison (28:11):

I didn’t know that I had to just be quiet, but when I am quiet it was really helpful. And it was also interesting how patients just solve their own problems. You know, I would present the issue and this is what we can do. And then I just stepped back and let them talk and they had a lot to say. But then they always came back to okay. And I would feel comfortable coming in this point. Okay, okay, that’s fine. Or yes, I feel comfortable today and so I’ll be back tomorrow. Whatever. You know, they were solving their own problems. It wasn’t that I had to force them to come in next week or next month, that that was really good, that listening, I’m going to have to do more of that. So you’ve learned a lot. So you’re saying phase three could be like we’re starting to understand what it is that might be, I don’t know.

Allison (28:58):

I don’t want to say necessary, but it’s kinda like a lot of people got invested in heavy filtration, air filtration systems and it’s not like, you know whether that’s going to be something that’s going to be mandated or important to stay. But it’s like people wanted to be proactive, kind of like the doors. So I think that as a dentist your professional judgment is really important. And so it isn’t necessarily important what I’m doing or what John Smith is doing down the street. It’s who are you and what, what is your health like and what are your team members health like that. You need to look at that. And then I think it’s, what’s your practice look like? You know, in my neighborhood, I have older patients. I have people that are much more vulnerable than somebody who lives in Anthem. So my practice probably has more things that make people feel safe than someone who an Anthem needs to do and it’s perfectly valid, perfectly reasonable, and I shouldn’t judge them and they shouldn’t judge me because that’s, this is our training.

Allison (30:01):

We’re doctors, we know who our patients are. We talked to them all the time. It’s, there are government regulations that you have to follow their OSHA regulations that you have to follow, but most of it is professional judgment. That’s kind of, I don’t want to say scary, but it’s like for those that are looking for like just I want to download the thing, tell me what to do. This is what I’ll do so that I can, I don’t know. I can know that I’ve done what’s necessary. It’s like if there’s not that really clean cut, these are the five steps you have to do and you actually have to use judgment. I don’t know, it just feels a little bit more ambiguous, but we’re doctors, it’s always ambiguous. So the science will catch up and we’ll have better information in a couple of months. And that’s when I think phase three will happen.

Allison (30:45):

We’ll know that. Okay. We didn’t need to do have a filters that was unnecessary. So it was an unnecessary expense. Fine. I kinda like it anyway, so it’s okay. But we don’t need to have face shields that was an unnecessary expense or they may say, Oh, now you got to wear goggles. So I don’t know. I don’t know what the science is going to say and I’m just trying to be flexible, which is not something I’m good at with listening and changing and modifying whatever needs to be modified as, as I get more information, being flexible, being adaptive, being open to changing hourly. It’s not hourly anymore. So the next week we only had two meetings and they were very short. Just clarify what’s going to happen. And this week we actually didn’t have a meeting. Next week we’re going to have another two hour meeting to catch up and see what’s working, what’s not.

Allison (31:39):

But it, it is that you’re evolving and it’s okay too, that if you did something that maybe you needed to do more, you can’t look back and say, Oh my God, I totally screwed up last week. We didn’t have any face shields and now we should have him. It’s fine. It’s fine. As you learn, you do it and you have to decide if this is necessary in this situation. So if any of you have questions for Dr. House I’m totally just going to position you as the expert right now. Oh, don’t do that to me. No, no, no, no, no. Don’t do that to me. But you know what you are saying to, you’re so generous with what you’ve gone through and anything you’ve learned, you’re so open because it’s not this competitive, it’s my secret trade secrets or something. It’s kind of like all my God, like I’m stumbling through this and this is what I’m figuring out.

Allison (32:30):

So I’m just saying if someone really doesn’t even know where to start and they would just like to, to message you and reach out. I mean, absolutely. I’ll do my best. I don’t want to say on the expert. I don’t have all the answers. But I’m happy to be generous with what I know and what I’ve learned. But you’re, you’re going to be okay. It’s going to be okay and ask for the competitive piece. I really think that our best, our best self moving forward is us working together. Look at each other as, as colleagues, and how can we help each other? And how can we get through this cause this is the most difficult thing any of us have ever faced.

Speaker 1 (33:12):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:12):

Thank you for listening to the authentic dentist podcast. To join Alison and John on this journey, hit the subscribe button to never miss an episode. Here’s to your success. Express yourself fully live, authentic.

Speaker 1 (33:28):

[Inaudible].

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