Whine About it With the WINEgenist with Katrina M. Sanders, RDH, BSDH, M.Ed, RF - a podcast by ACT Dental

Whine About it With the WINEgenist
Episode #316 with Katrina M. Sanders, RDH, BSDH, M.Ed, RFShe isn't everybody’s cup of tea, but she is someone’s glass of wine! Today, Kirk Behrendt introduces Katrina M. Sanders, The Dental WINEgenist, to share her passion for dental hygiene and good wine. Great conversations need great wine! And with the two combined, she hopes to support, encourage, and empower others to elevate dentistry. If you're a dental professional who needs to whine about dentistry with wine and a like-minded tribe, listen to Episode 316 of The Best Practices Show!
Main Takeaways:COVID-19 exposed many existing problems in dentistry.
The Dental WINEgenist sparks conversations about those problems.Dentistry can be isolating since professionals are siloed in their own operatories.
And because dental professionals are isolated, it stops communication and great ideas.Join The Dental WINEgenist to share ideas and support one another in elevating dentistry.
Great conversations require great wine!Quotes:
“It is isolating. We’re stuck in this operatory where now, a lot of times, we don't have other colleagues to share ideas, ‘Hey, come look at this X-ray. What do you see?’ If you're a one-doctor practice, you don't have somebody aside from maybe your hygienist to share some of those ideas. And if you're one hygienist in the practice, you don't have somebody to help you sharpen instruments. Or if you're struggling to remove that piece of calculus, you don't have a colleague to bring into the operatory to help you out. And so, this is, I think, where a lot of ideas stop, a lot of high-level clinical practice care stops, and I wanted to be a part of the conversation that isn't happening in dentistry. And so, you want to have a fabulous conversation, you've got to bring some great wine. So, that's who we are. The birth of the WINEgenist.” (12:05—12:53)
“I think dentistry was caught with its scrub pants around its ankles when the pandemic happened. And the reason for that, I think, first and foremost, is that a lot of things that we needed to address in dentistry but hadn't had been swept underneath the front office rug. There are things that we should've been talking about, like lack of leadership and efficiencies within the practice.” (17:35—17:57)
“I think that what I do is highly essential. I'm not risking my life [during COVID-19] to just clean someone’s teeth. I'm an inflammatory specialist who’s highly trained in infection control. And before I go back to the operatory, I want to make sure that we’re doing this safely so that I'm not putting myself at exposed risk, nor am I putting the rest of the team members or other patients at risk. And that's where the conversation got away from us, is because these conversations that we should have been having about the essential nature of the work that we do, the responsibility that we have to the profession, that conversation went out the window. And it was more about us having fears about our safety, or lack thereof, when we go to work.” (19:48—20:27)
“The concern really became, so much was swept underneath the rug. And with one wave of a regulatory hand, boom, everything got blown out and it was exposed — we were exposed as dental professionals — to the things that were inadequate in our profession, conversations that needed to be happening. And that's where I think we’ve had the opportunity since March 17th to do better as a profession, to take what it is that we’ve experienced during this global health and financial crisis and really create the pivots that dentistry has so desperately needed for so long.” (20:53—21:33)
“We started to see patient screening taking effect [during the pandemic]. And what that did, that peeled back the layer that a lot of hygienists have had grief about for a long time. And that is, how do you update health history information on patients who are not interested in updating health history information? Well, now, it kind of...

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