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Years ago, in Dallas (or maybe it was St. Louis, Rochester, or Waukesha), I kicked off a dental CE presentation by asking everyone to “Raise your hands if you screen all your patients for oral cancer.” Each hand went up. Every one of them. “How many of you with your hands up have detected a lesion in the last 12 months?” Almost every hand went down. In a room full of 30 dentists, two hands were still up. My next question. “Of you two with your hands up, have you detected more than one squamous cell carcinoma in the past year?” Both hands went down.

If I had a dollar for every time a dentist told me her team won’t screen patients, doesn’t want to do sleep, or complains about how “insurance won’t pay so no patients move forward”, I’d have enough to buy a 2013 Camry with 135,277 miles on it. Even if you hadn’t heard the term before, you’ve experienced it. I certainly have. Many times.This crippling fear-centric behavior is rampant among dental sleep practitioners. It’s an inside joke among non-clinicians and sales reps in the DSM field.

Over the years, I’ve seen too many dentists try to buy their way to DSM success. They think that subscribing to the right billing service or getting the right HST interpretation service is going to be the game-changer. This isn’t a CEREC problem. You can’t purchase an in-office mill and somehow treat more sleep patients. Even if you hadn’t heard the term before, you’ve experienced it. I certainly have. Many times.This crippling fear-centric behavior is rampant among dental sleep practitioners. It’s an inside joke among non-clinicians and sales reps in the DSM field.

Analysis paralysis is a term nearly everyone is familiar with. We analyze, over-analyze, and re-over-analyze. Again. Even if you hadn’t heard the term before, you’ve experienced it. I certainly have. Many times.This crippling fear-centric behavior is rampant among dental sleep practitioners. It’s an inside joke among non-clinicians and sales reps in the DSM field.

February 2019. I was sitting in a Dental Sleep Medicine (DSM) course in Scottsdale, AZ. Pre-pandemic. But that doesn’t matter. It might have been my hundredth DSM CE course. Maybe the 200th.

I’ve worked with thousands of dental practices implementing Dental Sleep Medicine, observing what works and what doesn’t – noting behavioral traits and organizational skillsets that lead to high achievement and those that lead to floundering, flailing, failing, and bailing.