I recently attended the 2013 Pankey Alumni Meeting in Orlando Florida.  One night, while sitting around the bar with fellow alumni members, throwing back a few, I realized that after all these years our practices had evolved similarly.

All very different but quite similar.

I began to reminisce about the first time I went to the Pankey Institute.  It was the late eighties and I was at the lowest point in my dental career.  After fifteen years of practicing without a clue…I was ready to be saved.  What I learned was a way of doing dentistry that covered not only technical dentistry, but the business of dentistry and the behavioral components as well.

Dentistry is about way more than tools and techniques.  As a practicing dentist, an educator a coach and an owner of a dental laboratory, I find most dentists run into problems because they over-emphasize the technical component.

Meanwhile…back at the Alumni Meeting…one of Pankey’s elders, an original cadre member made a speech.  He said, “The Pankey philosophy is needed now more than ever.”

I disagree.  What is needed now more than ever is a philosophy…any philosophy, that teaches dentists a way to work their way through this incredibly complex field of technical dentistry, human behavior, business ethics, sales and marketing…in an ever changing world.

Honestly, I got lucky.  I could have continued to learn more and more fragmented technical courses without any sense of coherence.

Back then there weren’t many choices—today there are many institutions that offer a continuum of philosophical dentistry.  Many dentists have benefited from taking their programs.

But too many have not — and that is a problem.

Dental schools do not prepare dentists for the real world (an ever changing domain).  Today’s young dentists do not have the same opportunities that were available years ago.  Their student loans are higher and the cost of opening their own practices have skyrocketed. 

Between those obligations and an enormous amount to learn…they are looking for other options.

Dentists are doing more marketing than ever before.  Dentists are joining insurance plans in order to get new patients and fill their chairs.  Dentists are joining DSOs (dental service organizations-aka corporate dentistry).

Along the way dentists are losing their autonomy.  Some would argue that we always have our freedom of choice, and that is true, but to exercise it takes a lot more “philosophical training.”

Someone once told me that philosophy was a tough sell.  And I might agree…What?  Do we really need Aristotle?

But if Aristotle were alive in the nineteenth century he would have been William James—a psychologist, and if he were alive today he would be Anthony Robbins…a lifestyle coach.

After all he did train Alexander to become great.

The paradigm for how dentistry is delivered has changed.  There is no going back.

As the Affordable Care Act and DSO’s  become prominent, only those dentists who understand the complete concept of dentistry will survive with their autonomy.

And the philosophy teachers?  That role will be filled by government and corporate dentistry.  They will tell dentists how to practice.  They will take over all of the other domains that we used to call philosophy.  They will infuse the practice of dentistry with their mission…their vision and their purpose.

There are plenty of advantages of the old way of doing dentistry.  Everyone preserved their freedom of choice,  Dentists, as much as people would disagree, had to have the patient’s best interests at heart in order to survive…their goal was to help people keep their teeth rather than just watching numbers and bottom lines.

That’s how dentists have lost dentistry…by not paying attention to learning a “way” to practice. 

That is also how I came to sit at a bar with dentists who all practice very similarly…yet differently.