The Compliance Divas Podcast
Our podcast covers current topics such as infection prevention and control, OSHA and HIPAA compliance for dentistry. We discuss the latest regulatory information, answer frequently asked questions and give suggestions for dental practices to make compliance easy and sustainable. The Compliance Divas are a trusted source for consistent, accurate information based upon current guidelines, standards, science, and recommendations.
The Compliance Divas Podcast
#96 Dental Assistants Recognization Week
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Join the Divas as they share their experiences as dental assistants and consulting with dental assistants in observance of Dental Assistants Week. Plus, we'd love to hear how you are celebrating this week in your office. Simply click on one of our social media icons and share your celebrations!
Resources:
The Compliance Divas: https://www.thecompliancedivas.com/
ADAA: https://www.adaausa.org/aws/ADAA/pt/sp/home_page
DALE/DANB: https://www.dalefoundation.org/
OSAP: https://www.osap.org/
Welcome. I'm Leslie Cannon. I'm Mary Gavoni.
SPEAKER_02I'm Linda Harvey. I'm Olivia Wan. And together we are the Compliance Divas.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Compliance Divas podcast. My name is Mary Gavoni and I will be the moderator for this episode. The compliance divas bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating the regulatory world to keep you on course. You can subscribe to the Compliance Divas podcast through your favorite podcast channel or on our website, thecompliancedivas.com. Any resources that we mentioned during our podcast can be found on the compliancedeivas.com website, and you can submit questions to support at thecompliancedivas.com by email. This week is dental assistance recognition week. And the divas have come together to celebrate dental assistants who play an incredibly important role in dentistry. And we want to share the experience that our divas have as dental assistants. Three out of the four of us are dental assistants. Linda Harvey does not have a dental assisting background. However, she has an amazing career, has had an amazing career as a hygienist and as a consultant working with dental assistants. So, Olivia, we're going to start with you. Tell us about your dental assisting background and how it served you in the many facets of your career.
SPEAKER_02Sure, Mary. I started in a dental office when I was 19 years old and was hired initially as a dental receptionist. And one of the dental assistants said that I needed to be cross-trained in order for her to be able to take a day off because we had such a small staff. And so I was cross-trained and I attended the Tennessee College of Applied Technology to be a registered dental assistant. I was promoted to office manager. So I was never really a full-time assistant. I was the person that would help the hygienist write down the period numbers when it was paper charts. I loved helping hygiene, uh clean up rooms. I sat chairside as well, but I my calling was to be at the front desk. And initially I had worked uh part-time for the dentist and part-time for the courthouse and ended up going full-time with the dental office. And as an office manager, I think the fact that I did sit chairside helped me immensely in filing insurance claims because I understood the procedure behind the procedure code. It also helped me in managing inventory because I had a good grasp on understanding how quickly we went through disposables and how important it was to maintain adequate supplies so that it did not interrupt patient care or delay appointments. And as I mentioned, I really enjoyed working with the hygienist. And I think that's helped me now to bring down those barriers, if any, between dental assistants and hygienist and make that truly work as a team. So I think those early years working as a chair side assistant, Mary, is still invaluable to me working today. So I look back on those years as a great foundation to both being a consultant and as a lawyer.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I can't imagine how invaluable that experience is when you are working on legal issues with your clients because you have a great understanding of dentistry and what happens. So that is amazing. Leslie, can you share us your dental assisting background and how it served you in your business as a speaker and consultant?
SPEAKER_00Well, Barry, you know, I actually was very lucky. I was able to be trained on the job as so many dental assistants are today. And I'm lucky in that my dad is a dentist. So I had a very good teacher who had a vested interest in preparing me very well for the world of dentistry. And I think I disappointed him a bit by not going into dental school. I thought, you know, as I was growing up watching him in the ownership part of his practice, he worked awfully hard and he took x-rays home at nighttime and he'd go back to the office on weekends and he would read dental journals on weekends. How little did I know that I'd be doing a lot of the same kind of uh homework, but I thought it was an awful lot of work to run a business and be continually involved in the uh management part of it. Today I think dentistry is a lot different where so much is delegated to very capable individuals. But I learned how to not only be a dental assistant through the very uh helpful uh assistants of the assistants that worked in my dad's office, where they each took me and uh under their wing and trained me on certain things. So I went from stalking treatment rooms to actually learning how to assist to learning how to take x-rays. Uh, everybody was such a great team player and helping to educate me. So at the end of my, I guess you could say my education of dental assisting, I felt a need to maybe learn a little bit about the front office too. So that helped me in my life and understanding how to organize and set up an office of my own. And uh, of course, my back office experience, like Olivia's, helped me to understand insurance and understand uh how to explain treatment plan to patients and how to make sure that uh that there was uh consistency when I was a treatment coordinator and making sure that the plan and the specialists involved and that the patients' understanding of how everything worked. It was extremely helpful. But where I think it really uh where the rubber hit the road was uh at about midway through my dad's dental career, he decided to go back to school and specialize. So I was left with having to uh see what other options there were for me. And I actually started out by opening up a dental assisting placement program. I uh opened up an employment agency, so to speak, but with my back office experience and with my knowledge of what to look for in good people, because my father would always tell me, you know, what was important to him and a good employee, you know, what was a good dental assistant, what was a good dental receptionist or office manager? And and from that point forward, things just evolved where I started getting asked to speak, and I started speaking uh kind of coincidentally on how to uh conduct yourself in an interview at a dental office. What would be the things employers would look for to help you get hired? So, you know, as you can imagine, one thing led to another, and eventually I got asked to speak on infection control in OSHA. And here I am today, uh, 53 years after I started in dentistry. And I think my uh my time in dental assisting, even as being on the job trained, has really helped me for every other facet of what I do in business.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Leslie. Wow, what a wealth of experience that that you have. And um, all it I hope that our stories serve as um some motivation for dental assistants out there that there are so many things that you can do in your in your career. So, Linda, we're designating you as an honorary dental assistant for this week. So, share with us your experience. And you shared with uh the divas a while ago how much you enjoy working with dental assistants and helping them to be an infection control coordinator.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, Mary. I would like to recognize all of our dental assistants this week with a standing ovation. They just do such a marvelous job in their practice and thinking about all the different hats that they wear for all of us to appreciate, whether we're a consultant or whether we're a team member or whether they're where are the employer. I just can't imagine all the things that are juggling now that's changed since we all came into dentistry many years ago. And yes, as a hygienist, I did spend the primary all of my career in the dental hygiene role. However, there was a very small time frame the summer in between my first and second year at dental hygiene school and a little bit throughout the second year, I did work as a dental assistant. So when I applied for this job one summer, there was the woman who there was it was what we would say back then, a one-gal office. So the lady that was working with him was retiring and moving to Florida, which is where I came from when we moved to New York. And he is someone to take her place. So she mostly worked up front, a little bit of helping him with a little bit of chair side assisting. So he really didn't have much skills in working with an assistant. It was more just a little bit of cleanup after him. But I just remember trying to um revamp the office because he didn't have very many sterilization protocols in place like we would expect today. He had a few things, of course, obviously. He he did we did have a uh it wasn't even a traditional sterilizer, but I'm I'm digressing here, Mary. But it was a, I think we boiled the instruments back then, if you all remember that. So going back probably way back to the dark ages. But what I remember though from my first job as a dental hygienist, it was a very small office as well. There were three of us ladies, and there was a receptionist, assistant, and myself as a hygienist. And we got along fabulously. We were just like, you know, just really a tight group. We worked well together. And while I don't remember pinching in that much to help dental assisting, I remember helping and sterilization in other areas as needed. And particularly throughout my career, I would always hop up front to make those patient repair calls. And this was before for all of our listeners. This is before all the automated patient reminders, where you could target your patients with emails and remind them exactly what treatment they had left and perhaps even how much is left on their benefits for the year. So I'm chuckling because things have changed so much. But this is just a wonderful week to recognize a very special member on our teams, all the Dell assistants. So I'm happy to be here with all of my experienced divas in the world of dental assisting.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Linda. You know, I I every time this week comes around every year, I always think that it's too bad that this great recognition and the um the spirit of recognizing and celebrating dental assistants doesn't last all year and and all members of the dental team. But sometimes the dental assistants feel that they are not as good as. Um with the divas. Um, I started working in dentistry after I spent a year um in college and had no clue what to do. Um, I might have considered nursing, except my mother was a nurse and she said, don't do that. And so I quit school and I was looking for a job, and I knew someone who knew someone who knew this dentist who was just kind of starting out in practice who needed a receptionist, just as you had shared, um, Olivia. And so I worked in the front office. It wasn't a very busy practice, only two or three years into um existence at that point. We didn't even have a hygienist. So one day, about probably six months in, the dental assistant took her paycheck at noon on a Friday and she didn't come back to work. And so I then became the dental assistant for that afternoon, and I was hooked. I even just that one short afternoon. So when the doctor was going to place an ad for another hygienist or excuse me, another assistant, I said, Well, what if we put an ad for somebody for my job at the front desk and I'll be the assistant if you'll train me? And I had the good fortune of working for a man who was an amazing clinician and a great teacher, was really good at explaining why you did things and not only how, and he paid really close attention to things like ergonomics. And so it was really a fabulous experience. And from there, I went back to school, got a degree in dental assisting, I continued to go to school, also got my um dental hygiene degree, and I owned a staffing service as well, which is why I ended up working with OSHA and HIPAA compliance because my clients wanted help with that. So all of those years of experience in assisting and in hygiene served me very well to um help my clients and when I work with practices, and I'm sure Leslie, Linda, and Olivia, you all get that too, that they know that we understand what the pressures are on all these team members um during the workday. And I think that's important. We we are viewed as one of them, so to speak. So I think that makes a big, big difference. So are there any final comments before we announce our contest, so to speak, for dental assistance recognition week? Anybody have anything that they would like to add before we go on?
SPEAKER_01Mary, I would like to just recommend that they they celebrate all the team members throughout the entire year. While this is a special recognition week and October specially recognizes Dallas Delahygienist, I think we can do that through many things that I've seen some of our fellow consultants do, practice management consultants, and that is simply just having some kind of recognition board where you can post thank yous or little notes to one another and just begin to recognize and be grateful for the small things that you do for one another because you don't even realize what each other, what you're doing for each other throughout the day until somebody's out sick or somebody leaves the practice and you become short-handed. So I think just give give constant recognition in some small way all the time. And I think that keeps the team moving forward in a very positive, uplifting way.
SPEAKER_03It does. Thank you, Linda. And and also adopting the attitude that everyone is a member of the team. There are different levels of education and different levels of experience, and everybody has their particular expertise in the office. But if we can do away with the attitude of somebody is better than someone else because they have more credentials behind their name and really understand that we're all working for the good of the practice and especially for the good of the patients, I think it creates a happier work environment for everyone. Leslie, Olivia, anything else to add?
SPEAKER_02Well, I agree with what Linda was saying. We really need to make them feel special. Uh, in in many offices, we find that the one team member or another might feel overworked, especially right now with the labor shortage. People are double tasking and they are wearing the hat of multiple roles. And so many of the dental assistants, as well as the hygienist, are wearing the role of safety coordinator. So if we can just send a special thank you, even if it's a handwritten note from a fellow team member, something simple, so simple is just a great way to show our appreciation for each other.
SPEAKER_00Great.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Olivia. Leslie?
SPEAKER_00Well, another thing that we might consider doing, as I know our lives are all very busy and work, we can get caught up with a lot of things throughout the days and weeks and months, but it would be a really great idea for a dental office to appoint somebody to be in charge of overseeing some of these special things, birthdays and special recognition days. Now, I was following a dental assistance thread on Facebook, and one very clever office manager had a theme for every single day of dental assistants uh recognition week. And I thought it was so cute. One day she made bath bombs for each one of the dental assistants. A simple thing, very, very simple and inexpensive. If you don't make them, you can buy them fairly inexpensively. And she had a little note on each one that said, you're the bomb. And so the theme of the day was to recognize the dental assistants with something that was very small, but was a great token of appreciation on part of the dental office. So I think that each dental practice should have someone who's more or less like the cruise director, if you will, to oversee the recognition of things that occur. And with dental assistance, of course, this is the week to focus all five days of this week. Six if you work on Saturdays and uh and uh really recognize the dental assistance. Even a simple thank you for all the hard work you do and for all the things you have to juggle at the same time.
SPEAKER_03Fabulous, Leslie. I I love that. And I guess I want to go learn how to make bath bombs now because I love them so much. So, one of the things that we're really interested in is learning what our listeners are doing as special things for dental assistance recognition week. So, we'd like you to share those with us on social media, and the way you can do that is go to our um website, thecompliancedevas.com, and you click on one of the icons, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever you want to do, um, or Twitter, and share either a video or just a picture photograph. And we're going to then pull those together and we're going to give away our special Diva coffee mugs, which Leslie is the the queen of the mugs and and filling them with chocolates and and good stuff. So we will pick two winners from um from the pool of folks that enter the the um drawing. So we hope that you'll share your social media with us. We want to celebrate all of you and celebrate all the great things that you're doing. So thank you for listening to this episode and hopefully all of our dental assistants are having an amazing week celebrating dental assistants recognition week. The compliance divas bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating the regulatory world to keep you on course. You can submit questions to support at the compliancedivas.com. You also can submit photographs or videos through email as well at support at the compliancedivas.com. And we will have some resources for dental assistance on the compliance um divas website as well. So thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.