You can use the following as a metaphor, but it's an entirely true story.
Many years ago, I was walking around the side of the pool at the campsite we used to go to in Italy on those glorious family holidays.
I was speaking to a patient who was at that moment in Jordan, having been treated in England (Nottingham), and to the dentist who had treated them, who was now in Italy.
A call from Jordan patched to England and then patched to Italy asked me if it was okay that their gum looked a little bit odd after the surgery they'd had done (in the days before photos on phones).
At that stage, I'd had enough of giving patients my mobile phone number and telling them to contact me any time they wanted to speak to me if there was any sort of problem.
I'd had enough because although I loved my job, I did not want to be 'on' every single minute of every single day, and the truth was that I had been for about the previous 20 years.
I wanted to develop a system where I didn't have to give my personal details to patients, yet I was able to look after them in a way that was even better than them being able to phone me while I was with my Children on holiday in Italy.
We decided to investigate the possibility of setting up an on-call system at the practice, one triaged by the nursing team and one in which the nursing team were paid to triage the calls.
In that situation, all the personal stuff is removed; it's not the person who actually treated the patient who speaks to the patient, so someone can be objective about the difficulties and problems.
If someone has an annoying stitch, it's okay for them to wait till the following day to come in and have it snipped out.
If someone has a crown come off, they can wait to see someone at the best possible time; they don't have to be seen right this minute.
Removing the emotional and personal side of this makes it much more objective and much more manageable.
The problem with this is that you have to ask someone else to take the responsibility to make those decisions and in dentistry, I find, people are not so good at that.
I was on a call this morning in the practice early to speak to someone from another country who is utterly brilliant and is coming far away from here to do a masterclass with us, which will be extraordinary. I'll write a little blog about that in a few minutes.
I was chatting with them about their practice, and they explained to me that it was impossible for them to disassociate themselves from all the patients who wanted to see them. While they'd love to grow their business, everyone wanted to see them, so there was no solution to the problem.
They were talking to me about that.
I have a clinic that's called The Campbell Clinic, and my name is Campbell.
Did he not think that people would turn up at this clinic and insist upon seeing me, at least until we had developed a system where other people could see those patients and represent me, the brand, or the clinic?
Other people were able to take responsibility for providing the treatment that I used to take responsibility for, and other people were able to take responsibility for looking after the patients the way I always looked after them.
Giving people responsibility or giving them the opportunity to take responsibility for things is the most extraordinary way to build a team and watch people grow.
In my mind, it's way more satisfying than seeing a post-op X-ray of an implant case that I have done, but then it seems that I am weird in that, and everybody else wants to celebrate their own work instead of somebody else's.
Blog Post Number - 3960
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