Spear Proudly Announces Launch of Spear Curriculum

We are excited to announce our newest offering - Spear Curriculum - a tool designed to help dentists utilize the online platform to grow their practices, improve office cohesion and increase patient satisfaction. Spear Curriculum consists of whole-office learning paths specifically curated by our Spear Resident Faculty to help practices easily implement the ideas that have helped Spear clinicians achieve these goals for decades.

This curriculum helps the doctor and team learn together in manageable chunks over time and boosts team growth, resulting in:

• Greater patient satisfaction
• Improved office cohesion and cooperation
• Improved patient outcomes
• Greater case acceptance

A similar learning structure has been shown to have great success in other educational settings. A growing number of colleges and universities have been implementing guided curriculum to help undecided undergraduates work through their general requirements without losing time when they do choose a major. The research shows that more clearly structured learning curricula are helping to improve student outcomes.

For example, Florida State University implemented default academic program maps in the early 2000s to better guide students college path and decrease the amount of excess credits. The results were astounding - between 2000 and 2009, the year-to-year retention rate for first-time-in-college freshman increased from 86 to 92 percent, while the four-year graduation rate increased from 44 to 61 percent.

At Guttman College in New York, all first-time students are required to follow a common first-year curriculum intended to help them explore careers and choose a major. By August 2014, 28 percent of Guttman's inaugural 2012 entering class had completed an associate degree, which is more than double the 13 percent average seen in most colleges in large cities.

In another example, Queensborough Community College began requiring all first-time, full-time students to choose one of five “freshman academies” to serve as a guided pathway. Since implementation, first-year retention rates at the college have increased, and the college’s three-year graduation rate rose from 12 percent to 16 percent.

For the dental office, this is even more important. Given the pace of the average practice, it is very hard to devote time to continuing education. This problem is compounded when allocating time has no clear outcome (or return) for the time spent learning.   

Keeping the practice outcome in mind, Spear Resident Faculty combined their extensive teaching experience with feedback from thousands of members who are implementing these principals every day to achieve the most efficient and effective learning structure that focuses heavily on implementation for the entire dental team.

Design for curriculum began with the clinician’s education. As faculty worked to sequence the clinical and practice management courses, they worked to ensure that the clinician would only need to spend an hour a week on their CE. Once these courses were carefully curated, individual team courses and team meetings were layered in to help the whole office learn along with the doctor.

In addition, there are incremental implementation actions spaced over the course of the curriculum that follow the best practices of our most successful clinicians. When all of this is combined, the curriculum work to distill the experience of thousands of dentists to put easy to follow realistic action plans that will help every practice reach their goals. Following the curriculum one step at a time will help the whole office grow together without anyone feeling overwhelmed.