Spindel, your'e talking too much?


One of my favorite colleagues, who teaches with me at the dental school, likes to walk by while I am with a student and shoot me a "fake" dirty look and comment that "You are talking too much again!" Usually I am in the middle of a "teaching moment" but he has a conga line of students following him around and probably could use some help from me.

Although I am sure that he is mostly right, he is also partly wrong, since teaching involves explaining concepts and techniques to the students. They benefit by knowing the how and why we do things in dentistry. It can be confusing to both experienced and neophyte dentists on the many different ways good clinicians can accomplish excellent results. To tell the truth it is still somewhat confusing to me as well, but the devil is in the details, and different techniques can work well, as long as they are performed properly.

Discussions about the different ways to accomplish the same end can result in too much talking and not enough doing when a student has a patient waiting in the chair and sometimes I need to remember that some of the explanations can wait for a time when we are not so busy or the patient's treatment is finished.

Still it is important that we dentists understand what we do and why we do it. Our techniques should be well thought out and make sense. It helps if we understand the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques we are using. The fact there are many choices for us, when choosing materials, medicaments, and techniques can be perplexing, but understanding when to use what technique and materials is what makes a dentist truly expert and not just a "one trick pony".  One size rarely fits all and one technique is unlikely to work in  every situation!






from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2019/04/spindel-youre-talking-too-much.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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