One of the most common and powerful anesthetics in dental practices is not used for clinical purposes. It is the anesthetic of routine.

A certain measure of routine in daily life is inevitable and necessary. You need reliable systems and dependable outcomes to run a successful practice. The problem arises when the routines of a daily practice go beyond being a support structure and start becoming a barrier to growth. That's when it becomes an anesthetic that deadens the senses and prevents you and the people around you from recognizing some incredible opportunities. It's a form of anesthesia I see all too often.

You see it in dentists who become so entrenched in the daily cycles of delivering routine care that they become masters at diagnosing, presenting and delivering on a tooth-based level. Doing things this way makes it fairly easy to get acceptance, but it doesn't really show a commitment to the idea of communicating value at a comprehensive level outside that comfort zone. You also see it in team members who have been doing the same tasks in the same way for so long that they could do it in their sleep—and sometimes it feels to them as if they are.

You see it in the patients, who probably genuinely like their dentist and the practice well enough but are not particularly excited about dentistry. They see rapid and exciting changes in most facets of their lives, but as far as they can tell, a visit to the dentist is pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago.

The solution is fairly obvious but can be difficult for practices that have been in a reasonably productive groove to embrace. The solution is to shake things up by continually challenging the status quo.

For dentists this means seeking out continuing education that pushes you to reach new levels of excellence in diagnosis and clinical delivery. It means getting the team involved in educational opportunities too; empowering them to find their own new levels of performance. When this transformational change happens patients take notice. Instead of saying something like, "My dentist is good, I have been going there for years," they are more likely to say, "My dentist is amazing. It's the best practice I have ever been to, and you really have to go there."

The true greatness of your practice is usually right there to be seized if you want to; it's just a matter of shaking off the desensitizing effects of daily life.

Editor note: This article was previously published on March 31, 2014

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