A patient comes in with severely decayed #10 that I recommended to ext. patient has had to pull multiple teeth in the past due to severe decay and he was obviously frustrated at having to pull another tooth especially bc it’s the front. I told him that trying to save the tooth with a root canal and even a conservative buildup, the tooth would be weak and likely break. After a lengthy discussion, pt finally agreed to extract.

Cut to a week later, patient comes in to start tx and as soon as I walk into the room he says flatly “you’re not pulling my tooth.” I’m kind of confused but not surprised and I jokingly blurt out “oh did you get your dental degree since last week”. Obviously meant as a joke but he took great offense to that and now refuses to see me for my “unprofessionalism”. I’m disappointed bc I started a bridge for him (different tooth) that turned out really beautiful and he was so happy after that treatment so I’m kind of hurt that he took my admittedly kind of lacking tact joke so offensively.

I’m currently working as an associate for a private office. One of our part time hygienists kept taking 2 BW instead of 4BW even though I already asked her to take 4 for about 3 times now. When she saw her brother as our patient, she took 4. But everytime she’s here, some patients gets 2, some 4. I wanted to see the distal of the second molars and distal of canines if possible and I haven’t been in an office where you only take 2 BWs most of the time. How do I deal with this hygienist? Any advice would be appreciated!

TLDR: asked the hygienist several times to take 4BW instead of 2, but she keeps taking 2 on a whim. She works part-time.

I'm a dentist with 6 employees. We use eaglesoft and it's fine.

I write prescriptions through Icore RX. I WISH there was something through eaglesoft that didn't suck.

Anyhoo. IcoreRX told me I HAD to meet with them about my prescription software.. said okay sureee. Turns out it was more to upsell their new EHR software.

I said I wouldn't switch cause sounds painful to switch. But just curious about what it would cost. "for solo doctor of your size, typically 2000-2500 a MONTH"

BRO. How do you start with 0% market share and charge 30k a year!?!?! I wouldn't switch to a new EHR software company if they were 50$ a month.

I wish I could find a way to short their stock lol. it's not gonna work out.

New patient and need to restore #18 due to that void. How can I do this? What type of restoring technique?

Any tips on intraoral scannig? No matter what I do, what angle, air dy the tooth surface, triple, quadruple passes over the same spot, my scanner struggles capturing mesial/distal surfaces. Here are pics of my scans. Scanner is Medit i600 if its of any significance.

So was doing a RCT on #19 today with bran new files and great - a file separated in lower third of ML root. Wish this was an avoidable circumstance. Causes me the most amount of stress in the practice of dentistry. Anyhow I think I was able to bypass the separation and the final RCT on xray looked reasonably good however want to avoid this as much as possible. I used Coltene bran new HyFlex EDM OGSF 4-pack files and wonder if there is something better less likely to separate. Also I when doing the RCT I use a crown down technique, open up canal first with an exploring file and 10-15 file before rotary usage and coronal flare to avoid constriction but I guess it still happens to the best of us. Maybe should use some other brand? Thanks.

I have a patient with lower overdenture on 2 implants (24 and 26 positions).

He comes in like every 1-2 months to replace the nylon plastic inserts. When I look at the nylon inserts, they don’t look worn, but they’re slightly“bent” or folding over themselves just slightly along their perimeter within the metal housing in the denture and so the patient can’t seat his denture anymore. I replace the inserts, everything is fine. He came in twice last week (replaced Monday, bent one of them, came back today and replaced again). Every replacement in the past has been due to bending, not wear. He has a conventional complete denture on the maxilla.

He’s coming back in later this week again for the same problem. I’m trying to figure out what the cause is. Can it simply be that he is aggressive with insertion or removal?

I work in a multi dentist clinic (I’m not the owner but I’ve been there the longest of all employees - 11 years). We currently have a dentist who graduated end of 2024 who has started expressing interested in FMR and is doing a bunch of courses to pursue this. His work is fine and at the expected standard for a new grad. Only does single unit crowns - has never done even two adjacent crowns or any quadrant dentistry. I think that wanting to do FMR at that stage is getting way too far ahead and I’m worried. He seems the type that would jump ship if something went to shit and one of us or the owner will be dealing with it. What do you guys think about doing FMR so early?

Really trying to avoid shien and Patterson, who would you recommend or avoid. Thanks in advance!

What are your requirements for being eligible for bonus? Certain attendance percentage? No tardies? Route slips turned in each day? (With giving a certain amount of free passes etc.) Or is it purely based on collections/profit?

New grad here. I Did small a #9- DL on a young pt 2 weeks ago. A week later she came back saying the tooth is very sensitive to cold and air. Occlusion was good but I adjusted little more just in case and applied Gluma. Today she’s coming back she caed and said she’s still sensitive. Not sure what’s causing the sensitivity. Should I replace the filling ?

Thank you!

Hello r/Dentistry,

Hoping someone here can help me. I want to replace patient's implant crowns at site #7/10, but she has no documentation from previous doc, and I have been unable to figure out what brand they are. #7 is obviously elongated but hopefully the full shot of #10 can help with identification. She believes they were placed roughly 16 years ago. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Has anybody purchased dental equipment from this website?
Is there a possibility that a new portable digital xray is for only 520$? With sensor?!!
Normally the sensor alone is +800$!

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of good advice on this and we know that refusal forms hold little weight in lawsuits. When patients are refusing the appropriate care how are we handling this?

I’m looking for advice from other practice owners because I’ve been going back and forth on this.

My current office manager is leaving, and I need someone to step into more of a front office coordinator/lead role. It’s not a traditional office manager position—they’d oversee the front desk staff, manage the overall schedule, and handle collections, etc., but they wouldn’t be responsible for HR, payroll, marketing, hiring, or most of the other things that often fall under an office manager. We are a small office & I handle a lot of this. I basically want someone to take over the front office so I don't have to worry (much) about it.

I have an internal employee I’m considering. She’s smart, dependable, very good at her current job (primarily insurance claims and prior authorizations), knows the practice extremely well, and is well-liked by both patients and staff. From a competence and culture standpoint, there’s a lot to like about promoting her.

My reservation is that she hasn’t really demonstrated much in the way of leadership. She’s fairly non-confrontational, and this position would occasionally require some tough love with staff (she would be in charge of two employees) and the ability to be firm with patients regarding collections, repeated no-shows, etc. I can obviously handle the bigger personnel issues myself, but I do need this person to be willing to step up and lead the front office when necessary. Currently, these tasks are falling to the OM.

One additional wrinkle is that she currently works part-time, whereas this position would need to be full-time. I believe her to be pretty satisfied with her current schedule. I haven’t approached her about it yet because I don’t want to create an expectation of a promotion and then potentially decide to hire someone else.

If you were in my position, would you promote a known employee who may need to grow into the leadership side of the role, or would you look outside the practice for someone with more proven leadership experience?

I’m genuinely torn and would be interested to hear what other owners would do.

This temp hygienist posted about an ethical dilemma in the practice she worked at. Would love to hear what dentists think about the situation?

With the increasing cost of residency and 3 years of losing income. Is ortho even worth it financially speaking or is GP better in that sense? Most ortho residencies are en extra 200k-300k. I heard new orthodontist do not even make much. Obviously money is not everything, but considering I already have loans for dental school, I have to consider that.

I work in a busy clinic and have noticed that I tend to get fog-brained, lose creativity, and fall into this doom-scrolling loop after work. When I take a vacation, I suddenly remember that I’m a mission-driven guy and there’s a lot of stuff I want to do. I become revitalized and all of my ideas suddenly come back to me..

Then I get back to work and after a few weeks I fall into this anxiety loop again, attempting to wind-down from a days work.

I do the stuff everyone recommends. One hour of gym a day, a 20 minute walk a day. I eat healthy and would say I’m in shape. However, my mind and the ability to maintain drive dwindles, though.

I become unsocial, postpone messages to others, disassociate, etc after a while..

I can’t take vacations that often though. I wish there was some hack to become reinvigorated on a daily basis.

Dentistry is consuming. How do you all keep the positive energy flowing on a weekly basis and maintain a drive to keep on going?

I shy away from a lot of extractions with sinus involvement, but would like to up my confidence with them. Any recommendations for something tough like this?

Overjet’s AI product is fraudulent and isn’t backed by any science. Landmarks are inconsistent, resulting in faulty measurements, that lead to bad classifications, the wrong clinical findings, conditions and hence diagnosis.

The photos are directly from the company’s social media and any competent provider can spot the bad AI immediately. Overjet’s marketing team is so incompetent that this is what they promote.

Patients, if your provider is using Overjet Ai, Pearl Ai or Videa Ai - run out of that office! Known offices are Dental Care Alliance, Imagen, Oak and many more.

See there sponsors here:
https://overjet.com/the-ai-summit

Overjet claims .35mm accuracy but clearly is wrong in the vertical dimension, which implies it is wrong in the horizontal and buccal-lingual dimensions. Algorithms can not correct for elongation and foreshortening and are inconsistently wrong! Many, many more problems…

Overjet claims it’s cutting edge, but their unannounced Series D was a down round and the capital markets agree. Overjet employees are you aware your equity is going down and isn’t worth anything? The product is fraudulent, your CEO is a fraud and the clinical staff are all lying. So much for a Hippocratic oath.

Patients if you see Overjet Ai, Pearl Ai or Videa Ai being used by your provider - run!

Ban Overjet Ai, Pearl AI, and Videa Ai!
Get these frauds out of oral health!

Before you troll, OJ employees visit the SEC website yourself:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1809302/000180930225000003/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml