The Real Stress in Dentistry (E.251)

WHAT THIS EPISODE REVEALS

Most dentists think stress comes from production demands, difficult patients, or financial conversations.

The truth? Stress comes from misalignment.
When your philosophy isn’t shared across your team, patients hesitate, tension builds, and the burden falls squarely on your shoulders.

In this episode, Dr. Bruce Baird breaks down how Clinical Calibration helps you:

• Align your team around a shared standard of care
• Build trust with patients before the first treatment plan
• Reduce the emotional and operational friction that causes burnout

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Why patients really walk out the door without scheduling
• How “calibration” reduces stress for you, your team, and your patients
• The key to handling objections before they surface
• Why your team’s stress often mirrors your own
• How Clinical Calibration creates confident teams and loyal patients

IF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR

You’re tired of repeating yourself to your team.
Patients still hesitate, even after you explain everything.
You’re running a busy practice, but it feels like you’re putting out fires every day.

This episode shows how to recalibrate and lead a team that works in sync.

STOP GUESSING. START CALIBRATING.

Build a practice where every patient conversation reflects your philosophy of care.
Reduce stress. Grow with purpose.

Learn more

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Dr. Bruce Baird: Hello everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast. In this podcast, I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry, working with thousands of dentists. I’ll tell you, it’s not that my way’s the only way, it’s just one that has worked extremely well for me, and, and I’d love to share that with you.

[00:00:20] Dr. Bruce Baird: So you too can enjoy the choices and lifestyle. The productivity allows more time for things you love, increased pay, better team relationships, and lowered stress. Let’s get into it with this week’s episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast. The patients that walk out your door after you go through that process that you go through, that says, no, well, the conversation was irrelevant because they said no.

[00:00:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: What I want to do is get patients to understand their treatment and to understand it’s, it’s things that they’re doing in many cases that are causing problems in their own mouth. And once they understand that, they’ll say, [00:01:00] that was the best exam I’ve ever had. Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast, and I’m really enjoying this, uh, series of podcasts that, that we’re just starting.

[00:01:12] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, it’s actually for the Clinical Calibration Institute. And, um, and so we’re gonna go through a series of, of multiple, um, podcasts, uh, that are gonna talk about some of the stress points, um, in dentistry and. From communication and productivity to the stress of dentistry, to financial conversations, uh, you know, that don’t have to be awkward.

[00:01:41] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, difficult patients are often confused patients and, uh, handling future, uh, failures with grace and the dentist doesn’t have to carry it all on his shoulder. So, uh, today we’re gonna talk about the real stress in dentistry. And as you guys know, dentistry is. Stressful [00:02:00] it, uh, for, for whatever reason. I, I remember when I first started in dentistry, it, you know, I was not a very good boss.

[00:02:07] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, I had difficulties, um, communicating with, uh, with my, not only with my employees and my team, but I also had a tough time, um, even going over treatment plans with patients because. It would be a lot of money. And I would feel bad that, that, that they had this problem and that I, you know, and, and, and I took it personally.

[00:02:31] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, but overall, the goal should be let’s reduce the stress of you as the dentist, as the practitioner. Let’s reduce the stress of your team. Let’s reduce the stress on your patients and let’s. Also reduces stress if you have associates. And um, a lot of that can be planned way ahead of time. Uh, and you know, [00:03:00] ’cause most dentists, they run behind all day long and they catch up at lunch and then you catch up at the end of the day.

[00:03:06] Dr. Bruce Baird: We’ve talked about that in the podcast over the years, but how do we stop doing that? And there’s. A lot of different things that we look at, but what I, what I say is expect the unexpected. You know, in our practice, uh, when, again, when we first started, I was stressed all the time. You know, we had loans to pay, we had, um, we had a lot of, um, patients, which was great.

[00:03:33] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, but I didn’t know the patients. And I decided early on, probably in my fourth or fifth year, and I say that’s early on, but I. I decided early on that a patient’s complaint or an employee’s complaint or my complaints had, you know, had validity. And what I wanted to do is find ways to handle [00:04:00] objections before they became objections when the patient came in.

[00:04:04] Dr. Bruce Baird: Uh, an example would be when the patient came in that, uh, I had done an implant on and they come in. 30 years after I did it, and they said, I thought you said it was gonna last the rest of my life. And I said, Joe, I didn’t know you were gonna live this long. And, and we, we laughed, but I started explaining to patients what the actual future looked like.

[00:04:27] Dr. Bruce Baird: And my implants are highly successful. Um, 95 plus percent are successful, but there’s that 5%, one in 20. For some reason, your bone doesn’t grow to it, so let’s keep a watch on that. In other words, I am handling this patient having a failure, even though it’s a very small chance before I even do the procedure.

[00:04:51] Dr. Bruce Baird: Um, if my team is stressed out about things, I wanted to find out why are they stressed and look at it [00:05:00] again as a training opportunity. Uh, most of their stress. Most of your team’s stress, whether it be your hygiene, whether it be your clinical assistants, whether it be your administrative team, it’s because you’re not calibrated.

[00:05:14] Dr. Bruce Baird: You’re not on the same page, if that makes sense. You are expecting things done one way and you get stressed because maybe it’s not being done that way, but we’re not taking the time to literally train our team. On what, uh, on what things we want, uh, on how we look at things.

[00:05:37] Regan Robertson: Doctor, are you tired of repeating yourself with your team over and over again, and yet you still see treatment?

[00:05:43] Regan Robertson: Walk out the door. If so, you’re not alone. The Clinical Calibration Institute powered by Productive Dentist Academy is an all new online platform that unites your team around your philosophy of care. So patients can say yes with confidence and you grow with purpose, including. Online [00:06:00] curriculum with world-class faculty, monthly live mastermind sessions for each department within your practice and an online, private community.

[00:06:08] Regan Robertson: This is your home to grow. Head over to clinical calibration.com today to join every member of your team for one very low monthly membership fee. That’s clinical calibration.com.

[00:06:19] Dr. Bruce Baird: And one of my good, good friends, Dr. Jackson Bean, he was an associate 20 plus years ago. Um. He has games that he plays with his team, and I think that’s super, uh, great because they’ll look at cases and what do you guys think about this case in other, getting everyone to think, uh, not the same way, but to be on the same page when it comes to a philosophy of care.

[00:06:47] Dr. Bruce Baird: And so, so when you don’t have that, you have team members arguing with each other, you have. You have patients that are complaining about certain things. I, I always looked at a [00:07:00] patient complaining as just being a butthead early on in my career. Oh, they’re just a butthead. But what that meant was they actually were, one part of our system broke down and it was more our issue.

[00:07:14] Dr. Bruce Baird: And just the one person who complained, there might be a hundred others that felt the same way as they did, and, and I didn’t like that. Anything that stresses me out. Anything that stresses the team out. Anything that stresses patients out are things that we have to take, uh, you know, take, take responsibility for.

[00:07:33] Dr. Bruce Baird: And, you know, my team used to, I mean, I used to joke that my team carried around a fire extinguisher just to put out the flames that I’ve created during the day, and that’s not. That, not that unusual in dentistry, uh, dentistry, again, very stressful. Um, but I believe the real stress in dentistry has to do with not being on the same page with your patients, with your team, um, and with your own philosophy of care.

[00:07:59] Dr. Bruce Baird: And [00:08:00] that’s really where clinical calibration, uh, our new program that we’ve launched, um, it really helps put that in perspective. It’s gonna help your team, uh, learn new philosophies and new ways of doing things. And when I say new ways, it’s in coordination with what you believe it’s, you know, and so these are the things, just getting, getting to where you’re spending time.

[00:08:24] Dr. Bruce Baird: A football team wouldn’t go out and play football, uh, at the beginning of the season and not have practiced, uh, during the week. You know, they, they, they wanna work on plays, they wanna work on things Now. True. They, they’re playing a three hour game and we’re playing a 36 hour game or a 40 hour game. But you’ll find that your stress levels go back, go down as communication increases and as, um, as productivity goes up.

[00:08:56] Dr. Bruce Baird: Stress can go, but what I don’t want is stress to [00:09:00] go up. You know what, you know when you’re producing the goal would be let’s, let’s learn a scheduling system that allows us to schedule our patients in a way that we don’t run behind. Let’s do treatment planning on patients so that we have a, a mo, a way of presenting that allows the patient to understand their treatment.

[00:09:23] Dr. Bruce Baird: That’s why we use risk factors. Um, you know, John Coy is the first one that came up with these risk factors that I know of, that I heard from, and I took that to mean, oh my goodness, you mean all of this is not my fault, it’s the patient’s fault. And once I was able to start describing and explaining to the patients what is going on in their mouth and why it’s going not, which tooth broke and which cavity needs to be filled, that that’s.

[00:09:51] Dr. Bruce Baird: That’s almost irrelevant. I mean, the patients that walk out your door after you go through that process that you go through, that says, no, [00:10:00] well, the conversation was irrelevant because they said no. What I wanna do is get patients to understand their treatment and to understand it’s, it’s things that they’re doing in many cases that are causing problems in their own mouth.

[00:10:15] Dr. Bruce Baird: And once they understand that, they’ll say, that was the best exam I’ve ever had. That’s even before I’ve gone into looking at the teeth. So by getting to know your patients, by, uh, that understanding, you know, uh, where you from, how long have you lived here, um, and getting some points in common with that patient.

[00:10:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: And we’re gonna talk about that when we talk about communication and productivity. But it’s, it’s critical. I don’t wanna work on strangers. I wanna work on my friends and. If I get to know somebody, you know, the chances of me, uh, building a relationship with them goes way out. Um, people will not trust you, you [00:11:00] know, and they won’t buy from you, uh, unless they do trust you and.

[00:11:05] Dr. Bruce Baird: You know, you just don’t meet somebody in a second and all of a sudden, oh, I trust this person. Unless you set it up that way, unless everything you do in your office helps create that trust from the way that they’re answering at the front desk, across the board, uh, facility, cleanliness, all these things help begin to build trust.

[00:11:25] Dr. Bruce Baird: You know, we’re big into marketing and going out and, and, and finding patients that need the services that I like to do, but. Any patient who walks in your door should feel comfortable and through the exam process, should be, uh, should be a part of, um, your, your treatment planning. It should be a part of everything that you do so that the patient will move forward with their treatment.

[00:11:48] Dr. Bruce Baird: People that, not that need the treatment, but people that want the treatment that you’re offering will find ways to do it. Uh, I started the company, uh, [00:12:00] compassionate Finance years ago and. It was to help those folks that needed help to get their financing. They, they might not be credit worthy, but they were payment worthy.

[00:12:10] Dr. Bruce Baird: And that company we did over a billion dollars in loans for doctors and patients that, uh, just allowed patients to be able to say yes to treatment. But the truth is, even in my own office, I did not have to use that financing that often. Because my patients would find ways to do it because we, we worked through our system, um, and our exam process, which is kind of a unique way of, of examining the patient without concern, uh, which tooth needs this and which tooth needs that.

[00:12:45] Dr. Bruce Baird: But with an understanding that the patient would go, oh, now I understand. ’cause if you don’t change their habits, I, I, I talk to young dentists all the time. If you don’t help the patient change the habits or give them [00:13:00] something to help with their habits, like an occlusal guard for a grinder, or you know, uh, an appliance for somebody who has apnea or you know, all of these things, if you don’t find ways that they understand how they can help, guess what?

[00:13:16] Dr. Bruce Baird: Your dentistry’s gonna fave, and it’ll be for some patients, if they’re a heavy sugar intake person, it’ll fail quickly. That’s causes stress. Who does it cause stress to Patient? Yeah. Team. Yeah, you, yeah. Failure causes stress, and so even though we don’t like failure, there are things that we can do to help the patient so that their dentistry and the work that you’ve done doesn’t fail.

[00:13:47] Dr. Bruce Baird: My, my philosophy is if I do the work for you, and I tell you as a patient. You know, there’s a great chance because of the materials we use, because of the things that we do, and more importantly, [00:14:00] the things that you can do as a patient and you must do. There’s a great chance that this dentistry should.

[00:14:08] Dr. Bruce Baird: Could last a lifetime. So, I mean, it’s very hard to enjoy dentistry when you’re stressed. It’s very hard for your team to enjoy working with you and your, uh, and the patients when they’re stressed. So stress is real. And if you don’t attack that, and if you don’t find ways to solve those issues, you’re gonna continue to have difficulty in dentistry.

[00:14:37] Dr. Bruce Baird: And in any other business or any other, um, work that you’re in, on the side. So, um, I hope this makes sense from the perspective of, uh, how, how, how to enjoy, how to enjoy life, how to enjoy dentistry. I enjoy dentistry. I love it. I love my patients and I love my team. And that in itself, [00:15:00] it wasn’t that way early on, it wasn’t that way for the first probably 10 years, but I had to make a conscious effort.

[00:15:07] Dr. Bruce Baird: Let’s find ways to solve the issues so that those issues don’t come back, and that’s handling the objections before it becomes an objection. So I look forward to talking to you guys again, uh, on our next podcast. And, um, tell everybody, tell your friends about it. Uh, we number one voted podcast, uh, I think at least a couple of years in a row.

[00:15:30] Dr. Bruce Baird: And, uh, so please tell your friends and look us up. Thanks. Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe. Pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify, or drop me an email at podcast@productivedentist.com.

[00:15:53] Dr. Bruce Baird: Don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the Productive Dentist academy@productivedentistpodcast.com. [00:16:00] Join me again next week for another episode of The Productive Dentist Podcast.