Combatting Professional Burnout

You're listening to the Phil Klein Dental Podcast Thanks for joining us. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Today, we'll be discussing some of the challenges that we face as dental professionals that often leads to professional burnout. If we are in a rut with our career, how do we reignite our passion for dentistry, feel healthy, and maintain our enthusiasm for our practice? To help us sort some of these questions out, we're happy to have on our show today, Dr. Eric Block. Dr. Block is a full-time practicing dentist in Acton, Massachusetts, certified by the American Association of Dental Boards for continuing education, and he lectures nationwide helping dentists become more efficient, productive, and less stressed with their day-to-day routines. He can be reached at info at thestressfreedentist.com. Before we get started, I would like to thank our sponsor, Tokiyama Dental, an award-winning Japanese manufacturer. Tokoyama Dental is recognized for its quality and reliability. Their top quality dental products meet the highest standards of the industry. And I can tell you personally, I know some folks over there, it's a phenomenal company that is 100% committed to innovating tomorrow's dentistry today. So we thank our sponsor, Tokoyama Dental. Dr. Block, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Hey, thanks for having me. A pleasure is all mine. So burnout is a very important topic. I mean, that can happen to anybody in any profession. because it is something that could be a career destructive process where somebody could be very focused on building up their practice and then burnout comes and then all of a sudden everything changes so we do want to get your insight on this and see if we can learn something from you and later on in the podcast i know i'm going to ask you about some early signs of burnout to begin the podcast can you talk about why there's an increased number of dental professionals that are experiencing professional burnout, so to speak, and why it's so important to maintain good mental health, both personally and for everyone around you. Yeah, I think there's more stress and pressure than ever with the amount of student loans that dentists are coming out with. They're coming out with $400,000, $500,000 worth of debt, which is a tremendous amount of stress. And then also there's a major staffing issue, which is going on. And that's not just in our industry, it's every industry. It's really affecting dentistry big time. And dentists are having to work with less, you know, less staff or there's more turnover. They're having to do more on their own. So these are, you know, these are relatively newer issues. However, I think dentists in general have dealt with or experienced burnout for years. But I think there's more awareness now. So people are just talking about it more. So that's why it may seem like there is more of it. I think there's there's more. awareness. There's more outlets now to talk about it with social media and all the stuff we have at our fingertips. But for sure, if you're not careful, burnout can lead to a lot of things. So my recommendation to any dental professionals out there that are suffering from stress, anxiety, is to reach out for help, and the sooner the better. So let's just say I'm a dentist practicing and I'm really experiencing some heavy-duty stress. and I'm going through some phase of burnout, who would I reach out to? What's the next move for me to get help? Yeah, that's a great question. Now, I was a psychology major at Tulane, and I always knew that at some point I wanted to go through therapy, and that's what really helped me about halfway through my career. I personally reached out to a local therapist and met with them once every two weeks, and it got to the point where I was just so... burned out and stressed and full of anxiety and regret and anger that I said I had to do something. So that was me. That was the route I took. I reached out to a local therapist and along with some prescribed medications and many major changes. It took a while. It didn't happen overnight, but I was able to get past it. But for other individuals that are not really thinking about it or know where to turn, then My recommendation is to, for sure, reach out to peers, mentors, consultants, coaches. For me, it was therapy. In fact, I created the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches or the IADLC.com, which is a place for dental professionals to go and they'll get matched up with a life coach that understands dentistry. Now, did your stress and anxiety stem from you practicing dentistry or was it related to other issues in your life? Oh, man, we went deep, you know, in therapy, we went deep into my childhood and, you know, why I was the way I was. And it turned out it was, you know, it was all up in my noggin. It was me being too hard on myself. I was putting too much pressure on myself. I wanted everyone to like me. And I was a people pleaser. I was saying yes to everyone. And I was treating every patient. And I was really saying no to myself a lot. The social aspect of the profession for me as I'm more of an introverted person was really taxing and a grind. And I thought there was something wrong with me. You know, I thought, you know, what's wrong with me? Why am I getting home? And I'm just so exhausted and stressed. And I realized it's, you know, it's the nature of the profession. You go from room to room to room. You're working on a patient on a one millimeter space and you have to give them this great experience. And then you have to jump into the hygiene room and you have. A lot of time I was acting, I was pretending like everything was great because no one wants a sad, tired dentist working on them. So I always had to put on this act like everything was great and make them feel like they're the only person in the office at that time and make them feel special. And you do this over and over and over again for an eight-hour day, and I would just get home and just be totally exhausted and wiped. And it got to the point where I just actually regretted my decision to become a dentist. Yeah. So the therapist necessarily doesn't have to have a background in dentistry, right? Or do you think that someone who is seeking some help in this area should seek the help of someone that understands the dental profession? Because it is a unique profession. Let's face it, what you do every day. I got to tell you, you're like anybody's hero to do what you do every day. I practiced dentistry for 14 years as an endodontist. An endodontist is not a GP. There's no comparison. I think it's much harder to be a GP, actually. What do you think of that? Was your therapist knowledgeable about the dental profession? Absolutely not. No, they were just a local therapist. And I would actually go through these exhausting stories of explaining my day. And you are so right. No other person understands the complexities of the dental office and what a dentist goes through on a daily basis other than another dentist. And we just kind of get each other. But, you know, my local therapist, she was great. She was, you know, you know, amazing. And but she didn't understand dentistry. And I would go through this long, exhausting story of, you know, the front desk and the hygienist and the patient and, you know, the office manager. And she'd be like, wait, what does the hygienist do again? And, you know, it'd just be like this 20 -minute exhausting, you know, rant of me opening it up. And, you know, it was just hard for her to understand what we go through on a daily basis. So that's another reason why I started the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches is that these are coaches that are part of the dental industry, whether it's a hygienist, a dentist, an assistant, admin. We have someone for everything, and they understand the dental profession. For me, therapy was great, but they didn't really understand what I was going through on a day-to -day basis. I think maybe having a good mix of people is good, but having someone that understands dentistry is a huge help. What are the early signs of burnout that could lead to more serious issues in a dentist's career? Great question. For me, I can share what I was feeling. It was a tremendous amount of anxiety, stress. I was so afraid of getting sued. You know, I found that I was really not engaging. I wasn't engaging with staff. I wasn't engaging with patients. I would wait and watch and monitor treatment instead of planning and doing. I didn't want to upset, you know, patients. I couldn't wait to get home after five o'clock to decompress from the day. I couldn't wait until the weekend so I could decompress from the week. And it got to the point where I couldn't wait until lunch so I could go home for an hour. And for sure, I couldn't wait until I retired so I wouldn't have to do this anymore. And that's, you know, when I said, you know, you're so miserable that you can't do this for the next 30 years. You've got to do something. And that's where I started to take some action and seek out help. So right now in your career, are you enjoying dentistry? I go in and I enjoy going in. And sure, there's bad days. You know, I come home and I'm. My wife gets it. I come home and I'm totally junk and exhausted. I have to stare at the wall for half an hour to recover from the day. There's some days where I see 40 patients. It's exhausting. But I understand that that is kind of the nature of the beast. But I go into work looking forward to every day. Like I said, there's going to be bad days. There's going to be bad experiences. There's going to be... There's going to be failures. There's going to be uncomfortable situations. There's going to be bad reviews. But those are going to happen to every single dentist ever. And that's in the history of dentistry. So my feeling is I don't put too much pressure on myself. I don't beat myself up. And I, you know, give patients my best treatment. And, you know, sometimes they're not going to like me. Sometimes they're going to want to leave and go somewhere else. And that's fine. But the important thing is that I try not to be perfect. And that has really helped me not have those Sunday night blues or I look at that schedule and, you know, dreading, you know, Mrs. Jones coming in the next day. It no longer really affects me because I understand that there's going to be stressful times. There's going to be stressful days. And that's that's all you know, that happens with every high stress profession across industries. There's no doubt about it. And I think you did obviously put a lot of stress on yourself because you wanted to please everybody. You felt every patient should be so satisfied when they walked out. And, you know, a lot of times it's the patient. I hate to say it, but, you know, they may not see what you see as far as what's best for them. And they're judging the office and you and the staff in a way that you have no control over. So you're killing yourself to get it perfect when there's no chance of that anyway. This is just human nature. We talked about offline before we started this podcast, some of the things that you've done with workflow, efficiency, productivity to reduce some of the stresses related to routine procedures that we do in the office. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. And I wish I had done this a lot earlier in my career. I used to just wing it and I'd pick up a burr and I'd start drilling and put it down, pick up another burr, pick up a material. I didn't really have a game plan for a lot of the procedures that I do. But now I have a game plan for every procedure that I do, whether it's a composite, a crown, more so with implants because there's more planning. But I'll go in there with a game plan in my head. And it really puts my brain on autopilot. It removes the voices in my head. And it's something I do over and over and over again. And I have a set of burrs. I go from burr to burr to burr to burr. Every burr has a purpose. And I just move along. It's like a cookbook. And I do the same thing with my materials, my crown workflows. And I've trained my staff to understand exactly how I work, the materials that I need. And guess who else appreciates this? The staff and more so the patient will say, wow, that was fast. And you two didn't even have to talk to each other because my assistant and myself. I have done it so many times and I do it really with a cookbook kind of recipe workflow. And I used to not do that. I would just, you know, wing it and voices would be in my head telling me to pick up this burr or that burr. And patients sense this and procedures take longer and they're not as efficient. But now I have a, you know, a pretty good flow going for all my procedures. Any particular products or procedures that help you with this workflow? Yeah, so I recently added clear liners and adding the buttons on, I will directly go to my favorite flowable composite, which is the Omnichroma Flow. And that has reduced a lot of stress because I don't have to worry about shade. So I'll use the Omnichroma Flow for my clear liners. That's my go-to. material. I'll also use the regular Omnichromopackable for when I do an anterior tooth of the Mylar strip. Again, I don't have to worry about the shade. It's polychromatic, so it picks up the shade of the tooth. And it's reduced a lot of inventory, so I can keep things simple. I'm not having to get up and go look for shades or different composites. We used to have this huge inventory of shades. And now I just keep a few materials, a composite, and that's really all I need. Yeah. So you mentioned employees earlier in this podcast. You mentioned that we're going through this period of time where it's difficult to get a replacement if you lose an employee. But then there are some key opinion leaders that I talked to on my podcast program where they actually, their goal is to reduce the number of employees they have, pay them more, but not have as many, which is less stress for them. They find that to be less stressful. Where do you stand there? Yeah, I don't think I could have enough chair-side assistance. I like to have three assistants for myself. I feel like that is a position that I can never have enough of. If I have enough, even extra assistance, that's a lot less stress for me. I don't have to worry about running behind. They can be helping me with procedures, scanning patients, setting up rooms, breaking down rooms. If I'm low on assistance that day, like for today example, I had one assistant because others were out sick. And I felt, you know, more stressed today because we had a pretty full schedule and we had to really be super efficient. And I didn't have the luxury of adding more same-day dentistry because of the lack of assistance. We're also a bit low with hygiene. We have a capacity issue going on with hygiene, so I could use, you know, another hygienist or two. ways where you can move things off-site or outsource or actually have less staff in the office with all the technology that we have out there. Yeah, I think this other key opinion leader who spoke with me on a podcast found it very stressful to see some of his staff not being fully utilized. He felt that there were some were really pulling their weight very well and doing a lot of stuff, whereas others were kind of doing work, but they weren't as productive as he would have liked. So he would prefer to pay the ones that did the work, give them a little bit more work, pay them more and have really dedicated employees. But I totally get it. Every office is different. And I totally see your perspective because if it was me and I had a busy day, I'd want all those patients cared for, you know, with a seamless workflow of productivity. So in closing, what do you say to a dentist who's been practicing five years or less? What signs they should be looking for that would alert them that they're heading down a path? that would bring them in the same position you were in where you were very unhappy with your career until you corrected it. But the idea obviously is to get in there preemptively and try to get it earlier, right? So we don't spend months or years of our career because that's our life that we're talking about where we're unhappy. What would you recommend to a dentist saying, you know what, if this happens, here's what I would do as soon as possible. Is there something you could recommend along those lines? Just like we tell our patients, take care of these problems early. Take care of them before they become problems. Prevention is even better. So if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling lost, stuck, you know, these problems don't go away. In fact, they usually get worse. So reach out to help, reach out to peers, reach out to mentors, consultants, coaches, therapists, whatever it takes, but to not go through this journey alone. And some other. piece of advice that I wish I had done more early on is learn what your comfort zone is. You know, a lot of times I would go out of my comfort zone, whether it's a procedure I didn't feel comfortable doing or a patient I didn't feel comfortable working on. It's okay to say no. And I usually just tell patients, look, I'm going to refer you to a colleague that is going to get you I want to get you in the best hands. And this is a little out of my comfort zone. I'm going to get you to a colleague for this procedure. And they're actually appreciative of my honesty. And I felt like when you do that, then you're saying yes to yourself and find out what that comfort zone is, which it may be difficult for a young dentist because you're still trying to figure things out. But once you do stay within those boundaries and for sure get help because. It's serious. Burnout can turn into depression, anxiety, drug abuse, addiction, suicide, you name it. It can build up and it can build up fast. So reach out for help, whatever it takes. This isn't the happiest podcast we've ever done, but the upside is that you're a renewed man. You've got a site called thestressfreedentist.com, which I think people should visit. If you've been enjoying our podcast, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. 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