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Beyond the Bite

The Official Blog of the Florida Dental Association

Tag: Beyond the Bite

How to Maintain Wellness in the Dental Profession

by Florida Dental Association Leave a comment

By Christopher T. Cooper

Dentistry is a tough profession, with long hours punctuated by difficult procedures that require high levels of technical expertise and concentration. It’s not surprising that burnout among dentists is high.

There are other mitigating circumstances, too. Dentists have studied hard for years to gain the level of professional expertise and recognition to practice. And if a dentist goes into solo practice, the environment can be a little isolated at times. Wellness in the dental profession is a hot topic.

Maintaining a healthy state of mind and body when practicing dentistry is of paramount importance. Here are three tips to contribute to positive wellness for dental professionals.

Get Active
For the most part, dentistry is a sedentary profession. Most of the day is spent sitting, and this can lead to various health issues. It’s important to check the ergonomics of your furniture to ensure you are lessening the risks of back and neck problems, which can become commonplace.

However, getting active at work can be a little tricky. A quick solution is to have a treadmill or exercise bike in the office that you can use before your first patient arrives, or even between patients. Having a private room where you can work out and then take a shower would be ideal, but resources may be limited.

Of course, this solution could be bettered by taking the time to get out and about, getting some fresh air while doing that all-important exercise. Look closely at your schedule and see how you can change things to fit in these important “me” sessions, which are vital to your physical and mental health. It may mean that you have to see a couple less patients a week, which although may not reflect well on your bottom line, is small change in comparison to not being able to work due to any health complications that can arise from failing to take adequate care of yourself.

“I always recommend active hobbies, especially if you work in a sedentary job. It doesn’t have to be anything too extreme, just some hiking or riding a bike. But the value of these activities is essential to your well-being, and helps create an effective balance in your life that we must all strive for,” recommends Brady Ozinski, a business blogger at BritStudent and WritemyX.

Surround Yourself with People
The social side of work is so important that it might be worth making a few changes in order to satisfy this need for human interaction. Make sure you employ a full support team and encourage interaction between the team. Engage with patients as much as you can and think carefully about sharing the practice with other professionals, ensuring you get to spend time with other individuals who are familiar with the trials and tribulations of this kind of high-skilled work.

“Create a social atmosphere in your practice with plenty of opportunities for interaction. Have social nights together and really build the strength of the team, which is so important for everybody in a workplace. The mental benefits of such steps cannot be underestimated,” warns Carole Franks, a health writer at Australia2write and NextCoursework.

Take Plenty of Time Off
Many solo practitioners are, by nature, workaholics. This will end up having a seriously detrimental effect on your wellness, and at the same time will have a hugely negative impact on your ability to earn in the long term. Think about the bigger picture — in order to sustain your career, it must be handled carefully.

Don’t let others judge the amount of time you take off. Chances are, as your own boss, you have the power to make these decisions, so choose what’s better for you, and then ultimately what will prove better for your patients as well, which is a professional who works at the top of his or her game when you are present. Sharing the practice with other dentists can help unburden the load here, too, as you can pick up each other’s patients at times when others are away, and generally all work toward a more productive practice that isn’t dependent on just one individual.

 

Entrepreneur, writer and editor Christopher T. Cooper is an expert in many facets of modern business practices. He is an editor at PHDKingdom and AcademicBrits, and a regular contributor to OriginWritings.

Funding Donated Dental Services will help Florida’s most vulnerable get life-saving care

by Florida Dental Association Leave a comment

By Dr. Cesar Sabates

“The mouth is the window into the health of the body” is a well-known phrase in the health care community.

As a dentist who has practiced for 30 years, I know that this statement is true.

I’ve treated patients who could not undergo transplants until the infections in their mouths were treated, and I’ve treated patients who couldn’t eat or sleep properly because of the pain of gum infection and decayed teeth, which can be associated with medical conditions such as diabetes.

Click here to read the full article in the Miami Herald published on Dec. 26, 2019.

Dr. Cesar Sabates is president of Florida Donated Dental Services, a past president of the Florida Dental Association, a Trustee of the American Dental Association and a practicing dentist in Coral Gables.

teeth.jpgFlorida Donated Dental Services program, which gives dental care to patients unable to pay, is seeking full funding from the state. Getty Images

The Complete Guide to Starting a Dental Blog

by Florida Dental Association Leave a comment

Dog Looking at Laptop Screen

By Aimee Laurence

Nearly every business is creating a blog these days to engage with current customers and try to get new clients. How can your dental practice create a blog with content that will be SEO-friendly, engaging to clients and relevant? Read on for a full guide on getting started.

Change Your Mindset

To start, you have to change your mindset of thinking of communicating via posts, tweets and other messages as self-promotion that will annoy people or bore them. Instead, consider that you have years of experience and training and you can give people valuable information about oral health care and dental tips. This should be in the back of your mind as you start creating content.

Think of Patient Pain Points

Your ideas for content topics should come from your day-to-day experiences. Take note of the questions that patients ask frequently and the answers — all of this is material for blog posts. Any questions or concerns that are unusual also can make for interesting reading, although you need to be sure that it’s general enough to protect patient privacy. Speak with the rest of your team to get their ideas and the questions they frequently receive. Don’t worry about writing on a topic that’s already covered online; yours will have a unique perspective.

Tips for Writing the Content

At the end of the day, you do need to come up with the actual words for the content. This is the part that most people struggle with, because it’s hard to write well. Some tips are to start the introduction to the post by stating the problem. Describe the topic, problem or concern as briefly as possible. Then, give some steps that readers can take to address the problem in clear, actionable ways. Start with the best tip so that they are interested to keep reading. For help writing and editing the content, consult Boomessays and Academized.

Presenting the Content

It’s been proven many times over that a blog post, tweet or any content will get a lot more traffic when it comes with images. To get some good, relevant images for your dental blog, look at getting stock photos from a site like Unsplash. You also should be thinking outside the box to come up with creative and fun ways to showcase what you’re writing about, like animals smiling.

You also can create an infographic to show data or information in a more eye-catching and visual way. These tend to get liked and shared up to three times more than written content. You can use some easy sites to create your own infographics. As per Martin Ford, a dental blogger at Assignment Writers and Research Papers, “You can even take your own photos of your office, staff and exam rooms of the actual dental practice. This gives readers a real insight into the practice. Make sure you have signed consent from staff members before you use them in an image.”

Be SEO-friendly

Your content needs to be SEO-friendly so that it can rank higher on search results. That includes the optimal length for a title, meta descriptions and tags, and more. Laura Fields, a tech writer at Revieweal and Big Assignments, says to “Know the keywords you want and use them, by thinking about the keywords that your patients would be searching for. Include links to other websites, which will help Google rank you higher. Link within your own website as well.”

Share it

Once all of this is done, it’s time to release it and share it. You can schedule posts, so they’re released at certain times where they are more likely to be seen and read. You should be trying to get people to engage with it and share the content, so to do that, include a call to action. This can be as simple as asking people to share what they’ve read or ask for their thoughts. It’s especially helpful to end the post with a question.

Following these tips makes it easy to create a dental practice blog. Don’t forget to be consistent with your content creation so your audience knows what to expect. Happy blogging!

Aimee Laurence is a tutor who loves writing about content creation and blogging. She works for Elite Assignment Help and Essay Writing Services, where she shares with readers her top tips and tricks for SEO and boosting audience size. In her free time, she is a freelance editor at Top assignment writing.