The Journal
*Dr. Vandana Dhameja
**Dr. Bhavdeep Singh Ahuja
Teething Troubles for the Starters – Difficulties –
Options – Solutions !!!
Success doesn’t happen with anyone, overnight. Starting a new dental clinic or practice is almost
comparable to starting a new business and can be attributed as one of the daunting tasks, any dentist
undertakes in his career. Most dentists lack the acumen and knowledge to run the ‘business’ of
dentistry where a dentist has to don multiple hats of a CEO, Accountant, Manager etc. for the new
‘shop’ to grow and thrive. The base for all this involves certain small but concrete steps which lay the
foundation for long-term success. The hard work starts much before the clinic inaugurates and you
open your doors ajar to your prospective patients. At this juncture, the only thing which is important is
the right utilization of resources available with us to march on to the next pedestal called ‘success’.
Introduction Review
Planning is a very important aspect before
venturing into your own milieu or what we call as
the private practice. Some dentists spend
hours, days, weeks and even months planning
out how they are going to take the first plunge.
They look for all sorts of data available in their
target area before taking the big step as they
foray into an unknown territory, for we are
almost clueless on starting our own practice.
We also resort to all sorts of opinions from highly
successful people (read: dentists). A zillion
questions run through our minds, mostly
harping on impending failure with the most
germane of them being “What if I don’t get any
patients?” Sometimes, these thoughts of ours
are bordering on stupidity as well. Our thought
process is that these fears are somewhat
genuine as human mind races from one end to
another in search of that elusive pinnacle of
glory. Most of us feel that we have got only one
chance to make the mark and it would really be
now or never for us, which in our purview is not
an exact feeling. Dentistry as a career does
have an exciting future as routine services will
always be in demand and if we differentiate
ourselves from the hoi-polloi with an astute
mindset, we are definitely in for a long innings of
our career covering most of the specialties
which we would be undertaking in our clinic. Dentistry has been evolving and has reached
greater heights in improving diagnosis and
simultaneously treatment of oral health of
patients since the early 60’s. To be a part of this
noble profession which is the ultimate motto for
us as we step into +1 Medical (XIth Standard),
becoming a top notch health care provider and
providing quality and established set of services
to the society. To maintain an upright collar, we
still have to abide by a set of rules and ethical
principles to achieve these above goals. In the
past two decades, there has been a significant
upsurge in the number of dentists and dental
colleges on one hand but a noteworthy
escalation in dental negligence and consumer
court cases on the other hand as well, raising a
heightened alarm for an ever increasing
demand for high quality care by the patients vis-
à-vis the advancement of dental technology.
The immaculate diagnosis and breakthrough
treatment modalities of this era have created
newer vistas of ethical ambiguity and
uncertainty, thus placing the dental practitioners
in a challenging situation in patient care all the
time.
When it comes to running our own
private clinics, we, the dentists are considered
as the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of our
setups. The relevant point here is that we
* Private Practitioner
** Private Practitioner
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Vol. 14 No. 2
May-August 2018