by Natalie Woods Love:-Dental The dentist for people who don t like the dentist Michelle Jackson is the trainee who worked her way up to being Operations Director of the pioneering dental practice, Love Dental. Love Dental is a mere two months old but it s already making waves. The clinic is based in Team Valley, Gateshead and their two KPIs are staff satisfaction and, above all, patient satisfaction. The team behind the practice is changing everything a patient hates about going to the dentist, in order to get non-attendees and phobic patients through the door. If you hate the drill, they won t use one, and if you hate the clinical smell, they ve eliminated that too. The practice has been fully designed around the requirements of the patients. After 18 months of market research, everything, from the pictures on the walls to the tools in the surgery, have been chosen specifically dentaltownuk.com \\ SEPTEMBER 2017 35
for the people who come through the door. A lot of that was down to Michelle Jackson. Michelle began her career in dentistry in 2000 after seeing an advert for a trainee dental nurse position in Newcastle. Two years after that she completed sedation training to aid her dentists growing interest in restorative dentistry and continued to practice there for a further 10 years, gaining an implant qualification in the process. With the practice going from mixed to private, Michelle had experienced almost every avenue a clinic could go down. However, she wanted to experience more and chose to join a dental corporate. As well as friends and family who always pushed her to do what makes her happy, she considers her dental tutor, Claire, to have been a huge influence on her ambition in this regard: She always said there was a big wide world out there for dental nursing and that I should go and explore it. Even now when I meet her for a coffee she says the same. It s a great career but there s so much more you can do with it. There isn t only surgery life. So when I did get the chance to join the company I thought yeah, I ll give it a go! The company that Michelle worked for aided dentists who wished to open their own practice but maybe didn t have the time. The company would build the practice up to the point where it was ready to hand over fully staffed, compliant and ready to open for business the next day. Michelle Gain valuable experience in Laser dentistry. Including fundamental and advanced techniques in clinical and cosmetic procedures. Includes various dental applications such as decontamination techniques, ablation and therapy treatments Dr Anoop Maini BDS(Lond) DGDP(UK) Call now for London dates 01227 780009 www.quicklase.com/training Only 265 6CPDs 36 SEPTEMBER 2017 // dentaltownuk.com
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open for business the next day. Michelle describes this as a great experience and having opened an abundance of clinics (including one in Dubai!), this gave her the perfect experience for creating Love Dental. When talking about the inspiration for Love Dental, she mentioned the similarities and difference between franchising and opening a unique clinic: That worked really well, but it was challenging when we needed each practice to work the exact same way. So we opened Love Dental because we wanted a place where there were fewer stakeholders and we had more of a say in things. We had the ability to change and adapt anything much easier and that s why we opened it up. We employ the dentists, they re not partners in the business and because we d opened up so many practices, this one was no different. It s just a case of being flexible and not letting setbacks get you down. Once you ve got it all set up and you see the customers coming in, it s all worth it. Opening this patient centric clinic took a massive 18 months worth of market research. The team had to understand what patients were looking for. What was missing in the dental practices the public all know and don t really love? Why weren t the British people attending regularly? How could they change that? Michelle said: Understanding what patients want is important so we researched for 18 months about what they wanted. We worked hard to deliver against that and in the early stages, we were quite surprised to find out that what patients highlighted weren t being delivered by other practices. Some patients wanted extended opening hours or weekend appointments and that was something offered by very few practices. People can come to us before work, after work, at lunchtime and at the weekends. We can carry out fillings without the need for the needle and the drill, which is something people really wanted. That was our biggest challenge. We have free car parking. We allow people 38 SEPTEMBER 2017 // dentaltownuk.com
to come in and have a look around without an appointment. We re trying to tick each box of what puts people off. Even if all they want to do is have a cup of coffee and have a look around, we don t mind that. It s just trying to find out what puts that patient off of coming and doing what we can to fix that, get them in and show them that we are different. The requirements of the public come in all shapes and sizes, from drills being replaced with lasers to particular pictures being hung on the walls. Love Dental is prepared to accommodate them all. Not only does this practice smell like fresh coffee and flowers, it also has available wifi and spaces for patients to work on laptops should they need to wait. One of my favourite oddities that came up was when Michelle mentioned that images of Yorkshire puddings line the walls: We did our market research and found out what made people comfortable. Things like comfort food, hence the Yorkshire puddings, holidays, coffee and we took those things and implemented them into the practice. Even if it makes the team hungry at 9 am! But it s what patients say that makes the happy and comfortable. As long as it s something we can do we make sure we deliver on it. We want them to know that they re in control and that we re not there to judge, we re just there to get that end result. Another issue that was commonly brought up was the patient s discomfort around syringes. To rectify this the dentists at Love Dental can use The Wand. This computer assisted anaesthesia system, whilst still a needle, removes the syringe aspect of anaesthetic injections. Instead, the tactile, pen-like instrument can inject the patient with a controlled flow of anaesthetic in a way that causes no pain. Michelle even told me that one particular patient who was totally phobic of the needle but by the end of the appointment they had her holding The Wand. They also play host to Fotona LightWalker Lasers. This hard tissue laser can administer a variety of complex treatments, a lot of the time without the need for anaesthetic. This is a rare item in the UK dental industry, when Love Dental was starting up there were only around 12 at use in UK dental clinics. One Fotona LightWalker costs 50,000 alone; this makes it a very pricey item for such a patient centric tool, especially if you have more than one clinician. When patients said they didn t want the drill Michelle and her team had to find out how they could work around this: Since the patients said I don t want dentaltownuk.com \\ SEPTEMBER 2017 39
the needle and I don t want the drill, it s a challenge for us to look into what we can do to overcome that. The needle was the easier one because we have The Dental Wand and in most cases, you can get away without using the needle with our laser. In some cases, they want to be doubly sure that it won t hurt and in those cases, we can administer anaesthetic with the wand, but in most cases, it s just The Wand. So we had a look around and seen what was out there we ve got a Fotona laser now. It can carry out fillings, it s really good for periodontics, endodontics, implants, tooth whitening, root canal assisted treatment, extraction, the list goes on! And if you put a different hand piece on it you can actually carry out facial aesthetics! It can also help with snoring and sleep apnea with its NightLase setting. With the dentists, it is a steep learning curve, because it can take away a lot of skills that they have spent time learning and been using throughout their career and this is just using a laser to alter problems. However, it is important that all our dentists are on board with it and I think once they ve seen the impact and how the patients feel after it s been done it s absolutely great. You ve got patients who can go back to work the same day and they don t have to experience the numbness, they can also get more than one filling done in the mouth at the one time on the same day. The ability for any patient to have access to this equipment if they want to is just one of the many ways Love Dental show that patients are at the forefront of everything they do. When I asked her if she thought to allow patients to essentially choose the elements to make their perfect practice, she said: I think it has and we listen as well, that s what s most important, that people are listening to what their patients want. When we started the UK wasn t crying out for new dental practices, there were already thousands out there. So we had to do something different, so listening and understanding what they wanted and then delivering everything we could was great, whether that be the parking or having plants in the practice. We only have two KPIs, patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction, so once you ve given both of those boxes a tick, everything should fall into place. Of course, we do look at targets but we don t force them on the staff behind the scenes, we don t get them involved. Reaching those KPIs is all we look for really. 40 SEPTEMBER 2017 // dentaltownuk.com
With their other KPI being focused on staff satisfaction, I was keen to know how they achieved this. Especially with them only being open for two months, when starting up it must have been difficult to get team members on board? Not surprisingly Michelle told me that listening to and acting on the desires of the staff is a key aspect of her team being so settled: When you re starting up a practice and recruiting a dental team you have to be really transparent with them, it s going to be a long process, it s all about getting them involved. You don t know how fast the patient list will evolve and you have to let them know that. It s about showing them that you will do absolutely everything to get the practice to bounce; we will do everything to get patients in the door. We want them to know that we are different. We want all the bases to be covered for patients no matter what they need. We want to play to people s strengths and we want them to take pride in it and have great relationships with the people that come in. We want to progress and retain our staff, even if they come in as trainees. When we re getting another site, we want to people able to say, do you want to join the head office team? What do you want to do? We just want to build a team and for them to be happy in what they re doing and that they know that they ll be listened to. With their current skyrocketing success it s not a shock to find out the team at Love Dental are looking to expand. They are currently looking to launch a second practice that will attract its own unique group of patients and, once again, the team will narrow down exactly what those patients need. Michelle claims it s up to the team to look ahead and plan ahead to suit the patients. With the patient focus being the aspect of Love Dental that she is most proud of, she says she wants to continue giving people new experiences and changing the mindset of patients who haven t been attending regularly: When a patient comes in and they re absolutely phobic and you get them in, go through the process, spend time with them, it could be months or weeks, but it s a case of just spending that time and then it makes me proud when they go out and they re over the moon that they ve done it or that they can smile again. It s just about bringing a patient in and giving them a great experience, even just them thanking you is enough. Then it s sharing that with everyone and saying this is the feedback we re getting. To conclude our chat, I asked Michelle what advice she would give to practices who maybe feel they need a little inspiration when it comes to making their practice a little more comfortable for their patients: Take a step back and look at the practice from a patients perspective. How does it look? Does it look well kept and welcoming? Does it look over run? Does it have weeds? Simple things, if it doesn t look like you maintain your practice patients might wonder how are they going to look after me? Have a walk through of the practice and get the staff, or even people anonymously, to pop some suggestions in a box of what needs to be improved and why that would put someone off. When you re in that environment a lot you might not notice. Are you speaking to people right? Are your letters written nicely? Even emails are important. Try and be sure that you re treating your patients the way they want to be treated. What would wow you and what would put you off? Maybe you could let the patients choose some things. Change doesn t happen overnight but little things can be changed easily and make a big difference! dentaltownuk.com \\ SEPTEMBER 2017 41