If the 24th of March 2020 was ground zero for dentistry then the 8th of June was D - Day.
During lockdown 1 businesses were defined and redefined by their actions, their compassion, their agility, their resilience and their proactive nature (or lack of it).
We’re all aware of the fact that there were pictures on social media of people whose incomes were protected for one reason or another while they sat in the sun drinking at 3 o’clock in the afternoon while the rest of the world watched on.
It will be a long time indeed before the reputation in dentistry outside of the four walls of the house of dentistry looks in anyway good again.
And so, we returned after D-Day in space suits and gas masks to try to keep our businesses afloat, scrubbing our hands raw with alcohol and pointing laser beams at our foreheads to pretend to measure our temperatures and to stay as far apart from each other as we could in case it got us.
And we worked and we worked and the patients came and we worked again into the long winter nights of September and October and Christmas and beyond.
As at the top of the tree in private dentistry could see our bank balances replenishing but what about the guys lower down the feed chain who expected to turn up every single day and get smacked in the face with a plank and then turn up again the next day and be grateful.
They started to go to places where it was better to work inside and outside of dentistry and even just to give up all together.
Their partners moved to somewhere else and so did they or they didn’t re-register or they went part-time or they were headhunted to a better place with nicer people who understood that it was hard and that it was impossible to do the job without them.
It happened to dental nurses and dental receptionists and management teams and cleaners and the dentists couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to come to help them pay for their holiday home or their Porsche.
And so the economy will do what the economy does and it will adjust and the workforce will move and meld and melt and go to work in a supermarket or an IT company or any number of places in the hospitality industry who are utterly crying out for teams and prepared to pay for them.
And the dental business model will fracture and change again.
Supply and demand means that staff will cost a lot more.
Not just (especially not just) in wages but in culture and education and progression and care and enjoyment and fun and all of those things that we need when we go to work.
The practices who are unable to adjust their business models to a point where they can pay their staff what they need to keep them away from the tills at Tesco (which is turning out to look like a much better job than some dental practices) will find that their practices will suffer indeed.
I always remember the tale of the guy who got so fed up in dentistry that he brought his phone into surgery with his appointment book and nursed for himself.
He would pick up the phone whilst he had patients in and book appointments and he could work happily as a one man band.
Sadly, this model is somewhat outdated and so, if you’re not prepared for the battle ahead, for the war for talent that's inevitable, then it's time to lift your head up and look because it's in the post.
Blog Post Number - 2787
Leave a comment