It's time to fight back (Part 7)

A message from Dr. Ziv Simon

March 24, 2020

Dear friend,

Thank you to the many dentists that emailed me their food tips. They were excellent. We are all going through this together.

When it comes to fitness and food, don't feel pressure.

I'm the one making the suggestions.

You are the one making the decisions.

Today marks the day when we started to fight back. No, I didn't develop a vaccine or a cure for Corona. 

What I did do is start the preparation for our office to open by implementing 3 new protocols.

1. New Corona patient check in and consent

2. New surgery dress protocol (and a new dress code)

3. New Surgery undress protocol

I will share all of that with you in the next few days and in the upcoming broadcast on Thursday. It's very initial and it is subject to change based on the circumstances.

We all realize amidst this crisis that dentistry is not dead and that people will come back for dental care.

The time to plan is now. 

If you just wait for this storm to pass, then when it's over and it's time to go, you will not be ready.

The issue is that nobody knows how dentistry will look like in the After-Corona era (from now on I'll call it the AC era).

In dentistry and especially in surgery, operating in the contaminated environment of the mouth, using universal precautions and high infection control standards have saved us from HIV, HepB and others.

The current standards don't fully protect us, the staff and the patient from COVID-19. 

There is still a lot of unknown but we must start now.

It's time to move from defense to offense.

When this mess hit us, we locked ourselves at home. We hid in our shelters which we should still be doing to flatten the infection curve. We should minimize social interactions and distance ourselves. Our hospitals can't handle all potential Corona patients. So PLEASE keep up with the social distancing strategy.

Dentistry is an essential business and we need to see true emergencies (predominantly infections that cannot be controlled with antibiotics and severe pain that cannot be controlled with medications).

So with the few patients we have, we must start implementing new protocols.

A new way to check in patients, a new way to schedule, a new way to collect, new attire, new appointment times and a whole new workflow of a dental practice.

I started today and will share what I know on Thursday. Creating the way dentistry will work AC (After Corona) is how we fight back.

We move from defense to offense. We attack back by adapting and creating a new way to help our patients.

In sports, both defense and offense are important. 

In battle too. We can only win by taking the fight to our enemy. Passivity doesn't win.

So although your practice is closed and you are home bound, try to plan and imagine your comeback.

What challenges, big and small, will you face? What is your patients' state-of-mind going to be? How will you staff function in the AC era?

Start thinking about it today and share your thoughts with me.

We are working on the broadcast for Thursday (Dentists Vs. Corona #2) where I'll be sharing how we fight back.

Stay strong!

Ziv.