I had an interesting conversation with the guys at Straumann regarding the Straumann implant mentoring scheme which was set up by myself and Jonathon Schofield of Bath Dental Implant Clinic in collaboration with Straumann.
When we initially discussed this project, to provide a structured mentoring programme around the UK for people exiting implant courses and pushing them towards 50 dental implants per year over a 5 year period, we knew that there would be a 2 - 3 year build process to get the structure of the scheme in place. It has currently been running approximately 15 months.
It is starting to reach the point where people are interested and we have several mentees around the country who are already in the system with mentors who have been trained on clinical mentoring days and approved as mentors.
The big resistance though apparently to Straumann when they discuss this with possible mentees is cost. This I am fairly staggered to hear.
The cost of a mentoring day in the Straumann mentoring system is £2750. This includes the following:
1. Initial set up and link to a qualified clinical mentor.
2. All the documentation required for treatment patients including consent letters, post op instruction sheets etc and an online facility to share cases with their mentor, including a structure of what should be shared prior to cases so that they can be signed off as appropriate.
3. An extremely experienced implant clinician in your practice for a day to provide up to 4 cases (sourced by you but photographed, x-rayed, planned and consented and discussed with your mentor.
4. Continued contact with you mentor regarding healing of the cases and advice on possible restoration.
When we set this scheme up we also offered advice to mentees as to what they might charge individual patients for mentoring sessions and how they would discuss the mentoring format. We showed mentees exactly how much money 'they would make' on a mentor day should they get 3 or 4 patients. The break even for a mentor day in generally 2 patients for the whole day.
So here's the wake up call...
1. These days are set up to allow you to make money while you're learning to place implants. Where else to you make money while you're on an educational course?
2. If you're unable to find 2 or 3 patients a quarter who want dental implants within your practice then you're not capable of providing a dental implant service. Please do not think that this is because you are unable to sell for a significant number of patients. There will be on average 50 patients per year who are appropriate for implant treatment who are keen to proceed. If patients do not trust you enough to uptake treatment following a discussion with you then you're doing something wrong.
3. If you think that experienced implant clinicians will leave their practice, where they could be placing implants themselves, and travel to your practice to have a stressful day teaching you to place dental implants for the benefit of you patients for next to nothing; taking into account the preparation they have been involved in of providing advice and overseeing the cases as they're planned together with the advice afterwards then you are sorely mistaken and you will never develop to your true potential in implant dentistry.
Regularly in lectures I discuss my 5 year journey towards placing my first dental implant in 1999 from qualifying in 1994. I conservatively estimate that it cost me in loss of earnings £125,000 in that 5 years, although I am sure the figure is much higher.
It's quite straightforward - to get to a decent position of placing your first implant put aside £125,000 of income and invest it in yourself to become an implant practitioner then you will be there (incidentally the Straumann Mentoring Scheme allows you to do that much more cheaply or even earn money as you go along)
For more information, email me: colin@campbell-clinic.co.uk
Blog Post Number: 1002
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