The importance of grit and a growth mindset

Dentistry is a messy business, there’s a lot of grit involved.

Grit on sandpaper discs, burs, on lathes in labs and most importantly, in the dentist’s, OHT or dental assistant’s head.

I’ve been training a young DA; just turned 17. She is interesting as she is a very focused and conscious learner. She’s this person:

theschoolofwrestling

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I can see that she‘s nervous at times passing instruments, however, she doesn’t let this get in the way of her learning.

She takes feedback and acts on it. You can then observe her focus on that aspect of a procedure consciously for the rest of that day, and maybe the next, until it’s mastered. Then it’s onto the next thing. If she comes across an item in a drawer, she asks what it is. If she hasn’t done something before, you can be confident that she will follow instructions to get through, without overthinking or letting her thoughts get in the way.

I remember watching this Ted talk years ago, this is just a snippet but it gets the point across. The speaker describes grit as:

In our profession there are knockbacks on almost a daily basis. The difficult patient, the filling that keeps chipping, the tooth that broke and you couldn’t get it out. The list goes on. Learning to deal with this is vital if you are to have a long and happy career.

Over the years, I have worked with many new graduate clinicians and trained lots of DAs; both new to the job or experieinced DAs new to the practice. It’s interesting observing how people go about learning and identifying those with a growth mindset.

As a new graduate, or at any stage, taking on procedures that are challenging is difficult. It can be tempting to pass them on to a more experienced colleague who seems to deal with these things so much more easily.

Maybe they are just better at hiding their anxiety. It’s worth thinking about how they got to that place. It certainly wasn’t by taking the easy route.

I’ve worked with clincians where there is avoidance of the hard things. Where a procedure or change gets in their head and gets the better of them.

In this situation the most important thing is to recognise what’s happening and come up with a plan. Yes, maybe pass the procedure over to a more experienced colleague but ask if you can observe and prepare for the observation by asking questions prior so that you know what steps to watch out for. Debrief afterwards. Be mindful about the learning

Find time in your day to practice that prep, or conversation or procedure. Look at photographs of preps on Instagram or the internet in order to learn to visualise the outcome you want so that you are beginging with the end in mind. Roger Federer only got better with practice and a coach.

I had a great week this week as another team member said “I want to get better” and had identified what they wanted to work on.

Have a great week, this is a good newsletter to share

Rosie

P.S. I don’t follow wrestling!