Of late, I found myself reading a lot of history and historical context.
Some of this I'm seeking out myself, some of it I've been drawn into by the press.
The conflict in Ukraine and how it mimics things that happened in the past, which led to worse things. The conflict in the Middle East and how it's rooted in decades and decades and decades of acrimony and struggle and fighting.
They say that much of what comes can be seen from before some cleverer people than I have written about this, about how a man stumbles through the fog to see the path ahead, only to turn around behind him to see the path that he has travelled, yet not to see the fog. And in essence, what that means is that if we pay attention to where we've been, it gives us a greater navigational tool for where we're going (at least in part).
While this is true when it comes to major historical events and geopolitics. It's also true professionally.
Last week I found the photo book again, (again) of my first 10 or 15 cases that I photographed in 35-millimetre camera starting in 1998. The first patient I treated at the initials DH. I treated, I placed his dental implant at the end of November of that year after having attended a Straumann two day surgical and restorative course, in the September. It means that this November I'll be 27 years into Straumann implant placement.
One company, one career, etc, etc.
What's interesting about looking back to this and looking back to that case in particular is that so much has changed, yet so much is entirely the same. How we talk to patients, how we source patients, what patient’s requirements are and what they need, why they're attending to see us for the treatment that they might receive, all entirely the same.
What's changed in terms of the preparation of such cases, the education is expected of clinicians before they begin to place implants properly, but this again is swinging backwards to where we were.
In order to make things more ‘accessible' many companies are now Providing 2-day courses to get starters into implant dentistry. This is not really going to wash in terms of surgical implant dentistry. And the guidance that are around, but nobody seems to pay any attention to this and so we head backwards to a time when the ‘weekend warrior` can do two days and just drill holes in people's heads and put implants in, (I guess like I did).
What's also clear, as we talk to delegates who come through the course is that there are new generations of people on the 2nd and 3rd and 4th iterations of ideas which are long since cast aside, but because of social media and the way that we exchange information now, ’anything goes', and young people are coming in, young people are inexperienced clinicians are coming to our courses and saying, “but why don't we just do that” .
This is (sadly) tied up with the fact that more and more people are less and less impressed with experience or time spent or mistakes made. As we get older, we become less relevant certainly to the people who are younger. We seem, and they probably are stuck in our ways more, and in spite of the fact that we've seen everything that can go wrong go wrong 10 times over, our opinions are cast aside as people fly towards celebrities that exist in their generation.
I think it's always been this way.
I think I probably was one of those guys.
It's just interesting now, looking back with my binoculars from this side of the fence.
How misguided and deluded people are when they are inexperienced and don't trust the wisdom of people who've made so many mistakes that they at least have something else to offer.
Blog Post Number - 4234