The more things change…

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Alun Rees

From the editorial in the current BDJ

“Each generation believes that it discovers everything for the first time and suffers each difficulty anew. Is it that a certain personality type was (and is still) attracted to dentistry? If so, does this partly explain today’s burnout statistics as much as it did then? ‘In 1913, Dormer was declared bankrupt, which he stated was caused by continuing ill-health … he had left his previous job as an assistant due to a nervous breakdown but had been unable to work up a business sufficiently large to meet his living expenses, been in financial difficulties for some years and had taken loans from money lenders.’“

As usual a great read, and I’ve never been to Bexhill-on-Sea either.

 

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Sleep isn’t for Wimps.

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Alun Rees

I had a nickname in my first year at university – “The Midnight Rambler” – I didn’t sleep very well and used to wander around the halls of residence looking for people with their lights on to share a coffee and have a chat. (I suppose the coffee was a clue…)

I finally got around to reading “Why we sleep” by Malcolm Walker and wish it had been compulsory reading 40 years ago, I might have had a more productive life rather than a more manic one. I grew through a period where it was considered macho to go without sleep, I remember the plastic surgery firm at Withington Hospital boasting at 11pm how they had been in theatre all day and were just about to go back there. I always said that I needed less sleep than others – in hindsight I was wrong.

Walker talks about productivity and the effect that sleep (or its lack) has on it. He quotes this article and makes the point that KPIs in most companies are measuring things that are easy to measure – revenue, goals accomplished, profit, new customers etc. Most of these are affected by employee traits creativity, intelligence, motivation, effort, efficiency, effectiveness, sociability, emotional stability and honesty. All of these are systematically dismantled by insufficient sleep.

Would you let a surgeon who had only had 4 hours sleep operate on you? I wouldn’t. 

Would you let a woman who only slept for four hours a night run a country? I wouldn’t do that either.

It’s a great book that will frighten you and convince you to make an early night and sufficient sleep a part of your routine.

Buy it HERE.

 

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Why wouldn’t you?

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Alun Rees

I have a hoard of unpublished blogposts, some half written, some one line ideas, they are the result of experiences, ideas, conversations, things read, seen or thought.

This one came about after talking to a client about his team routinely recording their patients’ blood pressure and pulse.

Increasingly dentists ought to be seen as Oral Physicians as well as Surgeons and should look at their patients overall health. Often dentists are in a better place to do routine checks than our medical colleagues and should do them before many procedures. This is good practice and those who embrace the role are to be encouraged. They, and their teams, do need to be competent at doing straightforward measurements. It’s something I started (but did not persevere) back in the early 1990s.

These are comments on three patients from the client

  • Nice outcome. Did patient’s BP and it was 210/99, sent her to her GMP as a matter of urgency.
  • Normally he would be hospitalised but treated under own doctor’s care, turns out to have high platelet count.
  • Had to send her away last time as we had potential cardiac issue on our hands. Saw her this time and she was still effusively grateful for us having found this. Saved her from heart attack or stroke.

The client continued:

“I cannot understand why “X” (client’s associate) is reluctant…”

“We should have been doing them years ago….”

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Just say no….

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Alun Rees

It’s easy isn’t it?

To say “No”.

Really?

I would love to say that having been close to and through burnout on a few occasion as both an employed dentist, a practice owner and (even) as a coach – yeah, yeah I know, I should know better – saying “no” is still one of the hardest things to do.

You want, and think you need, the business, the popularity, the money.

You don’t want to turn someone away, to use a negative word, to let them down.

What if this is the last person who asks you?

What if this leads to a hugely successful opening or opportunity?

What will they think of you when you turn them down?

We all know that we are all trying to achieve too much, demands on the only thing that everyone has (time) are growing, last week I visited Practice Owner and mother of three sorry, Mother of three and Practice Owner, Lauren Harrhy and marvelled at her composure and balance as she seeks to carry on her good work and become a BDA rep. 

Tony Barton from Red Kite World who was one of my teachers during my Coach Training sent me a link this morning. It features Greg McKeown and his book “Essentialism – The disciplined pursuit of less”.

I own this book but haven’t read it – yet.

Why? Because I haven’t found the time.

Why? Because I keep saying yes to other things.

Take a look at Greg speaking

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Burnout – Physicians

Posted on July 12, 2019 by Alun Rees

From The Lancet 13 July 2019.

Hui Wang, a 32-year-old Chinese ophthalmologist, experienced sudden cardiac death on June 30, after working with fever for 6 days in Beijing. Hui was the father of a 1-year-old girl, and married to a doctor, who donated Hui’s corneas to two patients after his death…

According to a viewpoint published in the Chinese Medical Journal, reports on sudden deaths among Chinese physicians sharply escalated from 2008 to 2015, and most of the deaths, resulting from heavy work load, were male surgeons and anaesthesiologists in tertiary hospitals in large cities…

Physician burnout, defined as a work-related syndrome involving emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment, is not only a serious concern in China but also has reached global epidemic levels. Evidence shows that burnout affects more than half of practising physicians in the USA and is rising…

Physician burnout, defined as a work-related syndrome involving emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment, is not only a serious concern in China but also has reached global epidemic levels…

Evidence shows that burnout affects more than half of practising physicians in the USA and is rising. The 2018 Survey of America’s Physicians Practice Patterns and Perspectives reported that 78% of physicians had burnout, an increase of 4% since 2016. Furthermore, 80% of doctors in a British Medical Association 2019 survey were at high or very high risk of burnout, with junior doctors most at risk, followed by general practitioner partners. Increasingly, physician burnout has been recognised as a public health crisis in many high-income countries because it not only affects physicians’ personal lives and work satisfaction but also creates severe pressure on the whole health-care system—particularly threatening patients’ care and safety.

The 11th Revision of ICD (ICD-11) in May, 2019, provided a more detailed definition of burnout, characterising it as a syndrome of three dimensions—feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of cynicism or negativism about one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy…

Addressing physician burnout on an individual level will not be enough, and meaningful steps to address the crisis and its fundamental causes must be taken at systemic and institutional levels with concerted efforts from all relevant stakeholders. Tackling physician burnout requires placing the problem within different contexts of workplace culture, specialties, and gender. Physician wellbeing has long been under-recognised in LMICs, and physicians’ sudden death and suicide due to overwork—the consequences of extreme burnout—have not been uncommon in many Asian countries. With rapid development of medical sciences, it is time to use medical advances to benefit the health and wellbeing of all people, including physicians themselves…

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The Weekend Read – Stand out of our light by James Williams

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Alun Rees

Full Title: “Stand out of our light : Freedom and resistance in the attention economy.”

This relatively short, but very important, book takes a good, hard look at “The Attention Economy” and the insidious effect it is having on our lives. The author, winner of the intriguingly named Nine Dots Prize, worked at Google as a strategist for a decade where he received the Founders’ Award – the company’s highest honour – for his work on advertising products and tools. More  recently he has studied at Balliol College, and the Oxford Internet Institute. His research topics are the philosophy and ethics of attention and persuasion as they relate to technology design.

He argues that, “attention is the fuel of our lives but we are living through a crisis as our attention is reduced by technology that we have allowed to dominate our lives. His writing pleads for society and the tech industry to ensure the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life.”

As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. We have moved from a time where we marvelled at and enjoyed the novelty of instant communication to where we are now. The advertising and marketing industries sees us all as fair game and will do whatever they can to sell us anything and everything, behaving as if it their right, not ours, to choose what we see and when we see it. As Williams says, “…digital technology does not act as an honest GPS, but instead entices you along paths that make your journey longer. All in the name of capturing your attention, such that you are deflected from your intentions.”

The author’s philosophical yet practical approach to the subject is worth a read and will encourage you to examine the way that you spend your seconds, minutes, hours and days.

Thanks to reestheskin for the birthday present.

Available HERE.

 

 

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Is it me or am I in a supermarket checkout time loop?

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Alun Rees

Headline from yesterday’s Guardian:

“Removing sweets from checkouts could help tackle obesity – study”

Every dental professional who ever lived will probably shake their head and roll their eyes, (not a good look), when they read this, and mutter, “Isn’t that what we have been trying to achieve for years, or is it decades?”

Back to Google:

The Sybil Fawlty award this time goes to the research published in PLOS (Public Library of Science) journal. I apologise to the good and diligent researchers who have shown again that putting sweets and snacks in close proximity to people means that those people will buy them – or pester a parent to buy them; and that removing them is good for our health by leading us not in to temptation but delivering us snack free at the exit.

BUT

Removing them reduces the risk of the supermarket making sales and therefore risks their profit margins.

We know all this. We all know this.

We know what causes/contributes to tooth decay, obesity, diabetes etc

We know that avoiding snacking is good for us….and have done for decades.

We know that checkout snacks are tempting and not a good thing.

So what will happen? Cognitive dissonance is a wonderful / dreadful thing.

 

Merry Christmas from ASDA (has this stuff got relatively cheaper over the years?):

 

 

 

 

 

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