Orthodontic Study Club 2010
April 15-18, 2010 Chicago - O'Hare Hyatt
Each year I have a tremendous opportunity to participate in a forum with 25 of the best and brightest orthodontists in North America. This year it was a treat to attend this meeting with Dr. Liliya Nikolcheva, our new associate.
The orthodontists come from all four corners of North America. Doctors from Florida, Atlanta, Jamaica, Sacramento, Denver, Toronto, Atlanta, Syracuse, Baton Rouge, Vancouver, Washington and yes little old Fredericton, New Brunswick get together to share best practices, what works and what doesn't with the latest treatment techniques with the ultimate goal being improved patient care.
Day 1
As always the group starts the meeting spending the morning getting caught up on everything. It was particularly interesting to listen to how the 2009 economic situation impacted different doctors in different ways. There was no uniformity in what happened to everyone in 2009 but what was consistent was that Q4 2009 and into Q1 2010 everyone seems to be doing a little bit better.
The advances in clinical techniques and ideas shared are powerful and will dominate much of Day 2's discussion. The afternoon of Day 1 we spoke about computer issues and how social media is an ever increasing way to communicate with our patients. Things like wearing elastics, brushing teeth and coming to the appointments as scheduled seem basic. The thing is these things are by far the most important parts of being able to get the braces off on schedule. Web 2.0 tools allow us to communicate with our patients and families and remind them of how important these things that are in their control are.
The first day ended with individual doctor presentations on areas of interest. Clinical pearls, customer service ideas, how to invest in staff training amongst other things. As expected the meeting is the best one of the year for us bar none.
Day 2
Day two started with a discussion about TAD's which are Temporary Anchorage Devices. These devices are used to help with holding things in place while you move teeth. Orthodontics lives by Newton's third law. This law states "for every action there is an opposite reaction". The TAD's help us hold the teeth in place that we want to while moving the teeth that need to move into a better spot. Great discussion and Dr. Nikolcheva and I have completed the training on TAD's we just have not found the best way to introduce it to our orthodontic treatment plans. Now we are armed with that information.
After the break we had an excellent presentation on website development and how to utilize the website to educate patients on care, services and things like that. Additional discussions about braces on the inside of the teeth, another new treatment option we want to add to our patient's choice.
We finished with a round table discussion on the best pearls in our practices and then is was off to dinner at Gibson's steak house. It was a terrific way to end an outstanding meeting. I already have the 2011 dates in my calendar!!
