“It's not what we did, it's who we were”

It's not what we did, it's who we were”

I heard this phrase at a lecture on Records, Consent and Professionalism this weekend.

I think it's pretty good and is a useful focus for any dentist as they move through their career. A touch stone to live by. If you spend even a little time thinking about this phrase, it provides the answer to any ethical question you might have.

Today I was at a lunch celebrating the career of a friend of mine, a dental colleague of thirty years. She’s moving on to the next phase of her career.

We were celebrating who she was as much as what she had achieved, although that is significant. We celebrated the way she had led her team, built relationships within the community and with patients, and how she had influenced and led the profession.

We didn’t talk about amazing cases. Everybody was there because of the person she was, and still is, personally and professionally.

How do you measure up to this? Is this something you focus on?

After thirty years in a city, will there be people you bump into at Spotlight who thank you for looking after their family and recount the story of how you helped their child when they broke their front tooth after falling off the wheelie bin? Or will they think something else when they see you?

Will there be support staff who you still have relationships with or will there be a collection of people who worked for you/ with you, who moved on and put the experience behind them.

Building trusting authentic relationships with your team and your patients will go a long way towards a happy and successful career that will provide as much, if not more satisfaction than keeping a count of how many “big cases” you sold.

When something goes awry with treatment the patient is more likely to understand you were doing your best, saving you heartache. There’s so many positives to taking this approach.

Steven Covey talked about “beginning with the end in mind”. 

Let's apply this to dentistry.

Rosie