In his book “myself and other more important matters” the author Charles Handy takes time to beautifully describe something called the Chinese contract.
Contracts in Charles Handy’s world when he worked in the Far East are something quite different to what we understand here today. When he was negotiating for the oil company he worked for he would try to enforce contracts on his Indonesian counterparts to try and “keep things in order” His counterparts explained to him that the is no part in having a contract unless everybody benefits. If there is an arrangement where everybody benefits there is no need to have a contract because no one will pull out of the arrangement.
This is, by far, the best arrangement to have when working with someone like a therapist in practice.
I was privileged enough to watch Peter Buchan lecture at the ITI Congress to the dental team on his working arrangements with his therapist in his private practice in Edinburgh and then recently this year I was able to meet his therapist Jenna.
Pete has developed a system for therapy working in the practice, which I have not seen before. It involves fantastic planned CPD and personal development for the therapist in many areas of her work. From discussion with other people I often feel that dentists seem to use therapists as a dumping ground, just to pass over the cases they don’t like or patients who are difficult. This is all well and good and I’m sure, for a short while, will make the dentists life easier but in the long term is an unsatisfying job for the therapist and does not promote development of the individual.
Developing individuals, the way Pete has done in his practice with Jenna, taking her to aesthetic composite courses in London, taking time to explain how he would like things to be done and demonstrating things and sharing surgeries is surely the best way of getting the most out of a group of professionals who are talented and motivated beyond many young dentists that I have seen.
We don’t currently use a therapist in our practice as we don’t do a great deal of general dentistry at present, but when that situation changes there is no question that we will adopt the ‘Peter Buchan model’.