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738: Dynamic Duo Dentistry: 3 Keys to Chairside Chemistry – Courtney Dalton

When you have great chemistry, everything goes better. But seamless interactions don't just happen. You first need to put in some work. To help you lay the foundation for great chemistry between you and your team, Kirk Behrendt brings back Courtney Dalton, one of ACT’s amazing coaches, to share three keys that will improve efficiency, predictability, and your patients’ experience. To learn the secrets of great chairside chemistry, listen to Episode 738 of The Best Practices Show!

Learn More About Courtney:

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Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Pour your effort into your assistants. They want to help you succeed.
  • Great chairside chemistry makes your workday more efficient.
  • Patients can feel it when there is no chemistry or alignment.
  • Having great chemistry starts with a morning huddle.
  • Create checklists to create predictability.
  • Master the flawless hand-off.

Quotes:

“The biggest reason [chairside chemistry is important is it] makes the patient experience so much better — exponentially better — and your day. If you can work efficiently with the person sitting next to you, the patient feels it. They can feel that seamless interaction where you anticipate what the other person needs, and you hand it to them perfectly. You know, as the doctor walking into that room, that you're going to knock it out of the park because your assistant knows exactly what you need to create the best experience possible for each other and for that patient.” (1:32—2:08) -Courtney

“[Chairside chemistry is] all about workflow efficiency. It's all about anticipating what's coming, about trust. A huge layer of it is trusting your assistant and the assistant trusting you so that you can move forward and move together really, really well.” (3:07—3:25) -Courtney

“If you know that you can depend on each other, you're going to be happy going into work. As coaches, we always say you spend so much time with the people that you work with. You want to make that a great cultural environment because the work people are your family. They're a different extension of your family. So, if you can be happy and be excited about going to work, that next layer is because you trust your team, you trust your doctor, you have that extra padding to catch you on those rough days. It's better for your own mental health and, really, it's better for the patient to be predictable, efficient, and maximizing your time together. It's all about a great patient experience.” (4:24—5:06) -Courtney

“[Having great chemistry] starts off at the beginning of your day. It's your morning huddle, hands down. It's that time where we pause to look at the day. We're not talking about each other. We're looking at the patients ahead of us. Where are we going? What do they need? Where are our opportunities? The best teams — and pretty much all the teams that we work with are the best teams — have a huddle that starts their day.” (5:11—5:39) -Courtney

“The huddle is for patient care, and the weekly team meeting is for practice care.” (5:45—5:49) -Kirk

“It's about what you're bringing to the huddle. So, yes, we're identifying who is coming and what they need. But we also want to keep any personal information, any little touches, anything that helps you to differentiate your practice from anybody else. I remember that your son just went to college, or you went on a vacation, or you're having a scary procedure done, or you were going through something. Whatever you shared, we're going to bring that back up because it's a touch point. It's really important for connection. If we know your DiSC style, we're going to share that information during huddle. If you saw a specialist, if we are waiting on something from a lab, we're going over today's treatment, we're looking at outstanding treatment — things that we've been talking about that we want to make sure we nail during this visit, those are things that we want to make sure that we're bringing up, not just to our leader but to the rest of the team who might have the opportunity to have a touch point with that patient so that we're all on the same page and we're all aligned.” (7:02—8:05) -Courtney

“Most of the time, a huddle doesn't work well because the dentist devalues it or hasn't really been trained or developed on how to run a huddle.” (9:44—9:53) -Kirk

“[Have] checklists. We want to be predictable. We want to know exactly what we need to have out for every appointment. The worst thing that you can do is have to get up several times from an appointment. It takes time, it takes materials — if you're taking your gloves on and off — and it takes that patient experience and you're turning the dial down because it looks like we're not prepared. Now, things happen. We have to change things on the fly, and that's okay. But if we can anticipate ahead of time all the things that our doctors will need for whatever the procedure that we talked about at huddle and we have it easily accessible, we're right back into workflow efficiency and being predictable. So, you have to have your checklists ready.” (11:02—11:51) -Courtney

“If you even think about it from the perspective of, ‘Well, I've had this team for forever. They know what I need,’ well, that's great. But we always say E – R. Expectation minus reality. If you go through the process of writing down what you need for a resin, a crown, an extraction, an implant, whatever the procedure is that you're doing, you are setting a crystal-clear expectation for your existing team members and for any new ones that you might acquire along the way. If people retire, if you “free up their futures”, whatever might happen, we want to have those checklists or those systems in place so that our current existing team and our future team have a really easy, simplified way of understanding what's expected of them.” (12:39—13:30) -Courtney

“Here's the cool thing about creating a system or a checklist. Every time you create one, you save thousands and thousands of hours in the future. (13:33—13:42) -Kirk

“Can you imagine going into a dental office that didn't have any systems or checklists and how frightening that would be if you're a great team member? Here's the truth about the state of the world that we're in when it comes to team members. Fifty percent of retention has to do with onboarding. So, let's say you do find a great chairside assistant, and there are no systems in place, and they're trying to figure things out. That sounds like a miserable existence. But what if you actually walked into an office like Courtney is describing where everything is a checklist? It's all on rings. It's check one, check two, ‘Wow, this place is pretty organized.’ I can go to work and be myself. I don't have to think too much.” (16:08—16:50) -Kirk

“Burnout happens for me most when I have too much on my plate, when I'm thinking about too much. The benefits of checklists in improving chairside chemistry are so many. Now, I can stay in tune with what you want. I can actually ask you about the checklist if I'm a new chairside assistant and say, ‘Is this still valid? I think there's a better way we could do this. We should probably add a step, or we could take this step away.’ Now, you're grounded into a document. And think about this. You might have four team members, but then you might have 10. And then, there might be a day where you have 16 team members. That's when you start to lose your mind because you want everybody to be on the same page. Checklists keep the chemistry and the alignment there. So, lean into them. If they're not working, you’ve got to get them working.” (16:58—17:48) -Kirk

“It is amazing when you find a great core values fit. When you find that person who fits culturally, they get where you're going, they want to go with you. They're ready to jump right in. Maybe this person doesn't have assisting experience, but they're coachable. They have the capacity to want to learn more. Your systems and your checklists really make it easy for that new person to lean into them so that they can absorb as much as possible without having that foundation that maybe you really would have preferred. So, having the checklist is another way to set expectations really clearly for the new team member that you have to help them succeed and help them become one of the best assistants you've ever trained.” (18:05—18:52) -Courtney

“This one is my favorite, and probably the most important [for chairside chemistry]. It's the hand-off. It's that exchange of information between you as the assistant and the doctor. The way that you do it, you have to loop the patient in with you. So, when your doctor enters the room, you're going to tell them exactly the conversation that you've already had with the patient. Catch the doctor up to speed. If you've gotten the patient ready, let the doctor know where you are or whatever information has been exchanged already so that the doctor can come in and start that conversation with the patient without having to ask the same questions that you already did. A flawless hand-off is so important.” (19:46—20:27) -Courtney

“Most hand-offs that I've witnessed are very underwhelming. I see so many of them — even great practices — where the team member is talking to the dentist behind the patient's head. ‘Here's what Sally said.’ I'm like, oh my gosh. The patient can't see either one of you. You're looking at the computer, and she or he is talking to you while you're looking at the computer. No — get out in front of the patient and talk to them face to face.” (20:33—21:01) -Kirk

“We've all had these experiences where you go to your MD, and you pour your heart out to the nurse that comes into the room and takes your blood pressure, and she asks you questions like a robot. ‘So, why are you here? Why are you doing it?’ You tell the nurse everything. And then, the doctor comes in and asks you the same questions. You're like, oh my gosh. I've got to get out of here . . . It’s annoying. And this is one of the greatest opportunities you have to differentiate yourself from every other dental experience they have and create significant value for the relationship.” (21:22—21:57) -Kirk

“Sometimes, the doctor will walk into the room and the patient is already laying back. And that's okay. There are situations where that's going to happen. But when you can, be knee to knee, heart to heart, eye to eye, and have those conversations, especially if you're not even in an appointment where the patient is already there for treatment. When you're discussing treatment or discussing needs, don't be behind the patient. Be in front of the patient. Include the patient. Don't talk at them — talk to them. There are ways to make the patient feel included and really bring them in, and then there are ways to exclude them and give them a reason to find a different practice. So, don't do the latter.” (22:03—22:43) -Courtney

“Think of all the opportunities that you have chairside to have that hand-off experience happen. The doctor comes into the room, we're exchanging information. Before the doctor leaves, we're exchanging information together. Now, I'm the assistant. I'm going to walk the patient up to the front, and I am going to exchange information with my amazing administrative team, and they're going to repeat it back to the patient. That's at least four times that the patient is hearing all of the same things. So, it's really strengthening our value and their trust in us. It's creating this bond where they know that they can tell us something and it's heard, it's remembered, it's repeated, and the doctor doesn't have to ask all of those because he or she has a really amazing team that knows how to do that really well. We want to create a great hand-off several times during the appointment because we have the opportunity to.” (24:02—25:00) -Courtney

“Huddle, checklist, and your hand-off — put your effort into these three keys. They are so important. And pour your effort into your assistant. They want to make your day easier. They want to know your expectations. They want to know what you want from them. Pour the effort in, watch them grow, and watch how much better your days get. It's really a very simple formula. Work on these three factors of your day, and things will get better.” (27:01—27:32) -Courtney

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:25 Why chairside chemistry is important for your practice.

5:07 It starts with a morning huddle.

10:57 Creating checklists is extremely important.

19:43 Have a flawless hand-off.

26:57 Final thoughts.

Courtney Dalton, BS, RDH Bio:

Courtney Dalton is a Lead Practice Coach who focuses on establishing a solid foundation in order for a practice to thrive. With over 15 years of experience in the dental industry, she is as passionate about patient care as she is about those who are providing it.
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