by By Dr. Sami Bahri
To stay healthy, a dental group practice needs a solid training program for new and existing employees. But at times, help is needed quickly. We cannot wait for an employee to go through the slower (although more reliable) program. This could happen when we are left with little qualified help to handle the schedule — like when the practice is growing and receiving more demand, or when several employees are absent at the same time.
What can we do in those situations? How can we maximize our existing resources and introduce new members to the team?
Hiring a new or a temporary employee might increase the load
Hiring a temporary employee might be a good option, but we need to plan for it carefully. Let me illustrate with the following story.
In 1998, our practice went through some difficulties. Right after we had moved to a new, larger facility, and as we were getting acquainted with the new environment, various health problems put out of work, simultaneously, for a whole month, two of our three chairside assistants and both our front desk assistants. I was left with Roseann, the newest assistant, to run the front desk and six dental chairs that I shared with two hygienists. The hygienists were nice enough to help with the chair side assisting. And since Roseann was also cross trained in the front desk tasks, she agreed to handle the front desk and to assist chairside whenever the phones were not ringing. To alleviate some of Roseann’s burden, we hired a temporary front desk assistant.
To my surprise, at the end of the first day Roseann asked me not to bring the temporary assistant back! I was very puzzled by her request. The load was too heavy for one person. “Why do you refuse the additional help that you so badly need?” I asked.
“Because when I’m by myself I am available all the time,” she answered, “but when you bring an untrained person, I have to spend half of my time training her. In other words, when she’s here I become half of an assistant.”
So, if hiring an untrained temporary employee and fitting her in the existing system was leaving me with less available help, what could we do differently to meet our emergency situation?
Step One: Identifying entry-level skills|
“What if she handled only simple tasks that need little training? Would that give you more time?” I asked, “You would be available all the time to perform specialized tasks, and she would be helping you all the time with secondary tasks.”
We took a blank sheet of paper and sorted the different tasks into three categories. The first category represented tasks that could be done by anyone right out of dental assisting school. The second category consisted of tasks that needed some training in our systems. The third category had tasks that needed advanced dental training. Our intention was to have the existing staff perform the two last categories and the temporary assistant to supplement them by performing the simple tasks.
Step Two: Distill the tasks down to the most important points
Our goal was not to make an immediate expert out of the temporary assistant, but to make her useful quickly. It was especially important, because time was limited, to distill the job down to the most important points. We gave the new employee less information overall, but we gave her the most critical information. To be most effective, we discussed the different tasks with the employees affected by the presence of the new temporary and came up with a list similar to the one below. You can certainly come up with your own, and preferably before such an emergency hits your practice:
- Act as a messenger between team members
- Greet and seat patients
- Verify personal information
- Clean instruments
- Clean rooms
- Restock supplies in the rooms
- Scan papers
- Help with medical history and update patient file
- Prepare instruments, gauze, gloves, etc., for exam
- Keep top of cabinets free of clutter
- Take/return carts (endo, surgical, or prosthetic) to where needed
- Put away sterile instruments
- Keep sterilization area clean
- Open and sort mail
- Match lab slips
- Straighten the reception area
- Shred paper
- Assist in perio charting
- Answer phone (at least put on hold)
- Check phone messages
- Lock/unlock doors
- Make sure lights, all machines and computers are on/off
- Replenish printer paper
Simple, but not easy
This technique seems simple, but it’s really not easy. By creating a full-time job for an employee who would go across functions and help everyone in the office with simple tasks, we are freeing up the rest of the staff and expecting them to perform specialized tasks in many areas of the practice. This in turn will need cross training.
Cross training takes time. It takes the willingness to learn many jobs and not dedicate oneself to being only an assistant, only a front desk assistant, or only a hygienist.
Once cross trained, the staff members need to be willing to move between jobs. Unless the culture of the practice has prepared for that kind of interchangeability between employees, and unless the compensation system has been structured accordingly, this interchangeability can be difficult to achieve.
If the staff members are willing to move between jobs, the next hurdle would be their willingness to communicate with each other frequently. In emergency situations, surprises can arise at any time, pushing us to make quick decisions and to communicate with the rest of the team members in a timely manner.
This method can help if you are short on time to train someone.
Writer’s note: We created this emergency training method for our practice in 1998. Then, in 2007, Jeffrey K. liker and David P. Meier wrote their seminal book “Toyota Talent: developing your people the Toyota way.” On page 265 they described an identical method applied by Toyota managers whenever they are short on time. That gave me the confidence to share the system with you, hoping that it will be useful if you ever find yourself in a hurry to train an employee.
