613: The 3 Things I Wish I Learned in Dental School - Dr. Jim McKee - a podcast by ACT Dental

The 3 Things I Wish I Learned in Dental School

Episode #613 with Dr. Jim McKee

Do you ever wish you could do things differently in the past to help your career? While you can’t get in a time machine, you can learn from the experiences of others. To help you with this, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Jim McKee to offer you his advice about the three most useful things he didn’t learn in dental school. You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it by listening to Episode 613 of The Best Practices Show!

Episode Resources:

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Sign up for Dr. McKee’s Advanced Occlusion course 

Check out the Chicago Study Club

Main Takeaways:

Listen to your patients

Work with your team members

Set your fees differently

Structure your meetings to make them more effective

Your patients have to understand the value you provide

A restorative diagnostic practice can be incredibly productive

Quotes:

“And when I look back at dental school, while there's a lot of things that I really wish I would have learned, I think there's three that kind of stick out. The first one is I really wish I learned how to listen to my patients. Because, you know, as a young dentist, you don't quite know how to set your practice up. And you hear a lot about ‘What you want to do is to create a personal relationship with the patient.’ So I remember this guy came in, and he grew up in an area relatively close to where I did. He needed quite a bit of work, actually, probably five or six crowns, needed some root canals. What I was busy doing was creating a personal relationship with him. We talked about similar places on the South Side of Chicago where we grew up together, people we might have known. When he came back for the consultation, basically he looked at me, went up to the front and said, ‘Could I get my X-Rays,’ and I never saw him again. And I realized something didn't connect. And it really brought home the fact that it's taken me a while to learn this. But ultimately, patients want two things. Patients want answers and patients want options. I was busy trying to create a personal relationship with him so we could get along well. The reality was he wasn't coming to me as a friend. He was coming for someone to solve his problems.” (01:46—03:16)

“So it became really clear that in order to treat these types of patients, it seemed like I needed

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