Burnout and Continuing Education in Dentistry – PDP095

Jaz’s Introduction: So we’ve all heard about burnout in dentistry and how it can be really catastrophic for your career. Now, the guest I have on today, Emma Courtney went through a period of burnout which was cause interestingly, by a major earthquake. So all the different things that could affect your life is fascinating her story based in New Zealand how a major earthquake rattled her life so much, excuse the pun, that it set her in a cascade of events, and she experienced a burnout and she left dentistry thinking that she would never join dentistry ever again. She’s now a passionate dentist, she’s a fellow Protruserati and it’s great to always have Ems’ support and feedback on the podcast. So Ems, thanks for being with the journey of the Protrusive Dental podcast over the last three years or so. You’ve been a big part of it. You’ve been early adopter. So thank you so much. In this episode, we discuss Ems and how she moved from UK to New Zealand to practice dentistry. And what are the cascade of events that lead to burnout and how we can look out for the signs of burnout. So if you’re in a difficult patch, right now, EMS and I will hopefully discuss in a way, that’ll help you to identify the signs of burnout and how you can overcome it. And it’s interesting that we talk about burnout and CPD because the other theme that we’re gonna explore in this episode is picking your CPD and deciding what’s part of your personal development plan. And it’s interesting anytime in my career, where I have felt jaded or burnt out, I’ve always found learning something new or going deeper and delving deeper into an area of dentistry, ie through in courses or further education has actually been the antidote for my burnout. So I find that by learning new things and keep myself interested that that’s helped me to overcome the burnout. Whereas in some people, it might be that you’re doing too many courses, and you’re burning out. So it’s it, we explore themes like that. Now, because I want to give lots of time to Ems’ a story, I want to do my own little section. So I’m starting a brand new wing of the podcast. So we already have the group functions. We’ve already got the interference cast, which is like the non clinical ones. We’ve got the main PDPs. And now I’m introducing the Occlusal adjustments. Okay, so occlusal adjustments, if ever, I have a guest on and where we’re covering so many different themes and we’re going kind of past that one hour mark. Sometimes I just want to do a little mini segment to just give my thoughts, okay, have a little rant sometimes, or have a little opportunity for me to go on different tangents and go deeper into my philosophy on a certain subject. So I hope you gain lots of value from this episode with Ems about burnout and CPD. And I’ll catch you in an occlusal adjustment in a few days, where I’m going to give you my own guidelines as to how to choose CPD, there’s a balance between Yes, any new education, any knowledge that you gain is never wasted, it’s always good thing. But also sometimes wasting your money on doing courses, which you don’t get to apply. I’ve been guilty in the past of doing that. So I want to share that with you. So keep an eye out on this occlusal adjustment, the first one coming very soon. I just want to give a quick shout out to Dr. Zachary Smith, I believe from Texas, this awesome email that he sent. Dr. Smith, thank you so much. I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. It’s messages like these that really keep me going. He said Dr. Gulati, just call me Jaz, man. ‘Your podcast is by far the best podcast for dentists. I’ve listened to you from the beginning. And I’ve seen so many other podcasts start to flounder, but yours is truly life changing.’ Oh my goodness. ‘Thank you so much and keep it up.’ I will definitely. I will and I really really appreciate. I appreciate you and all the Protrusearti who listen and send feedback and support, I really appreciate. Thank you so much. The Protrusive Dental Pearl i’m going to share with you is very relevant to choosing your CE or CPD. And it’s this, when you next are considering on enrolling on a course or signing up for a program or whatever, I have found this technique to be very useful. Think of a patient who will benefit, just one, it has to be just minimum one patient that you think will benefit from you going on this course or gaining this piece of education. And then can you apply that course to that patient within a reasonable timeframe to be able to gain the most from the course? And if the answer is Okay, I want to go into Crown Lengthening course and you don’t have any Crown Lengthening patients ready and you just like the idea of knowing about crown lengthening, then maybe you shouldn’t go on that course. Or maybe if you don’t already own a laser and you don’t have any case that you think okay, we’re using a laser on that don’t do what I did and go to laser course okay? Yes, I had access to a laser but it’s happening. Patients already planned in my head. Okay, I might want to need to use laser on this patient. So really, I think that’ll take you save you a lot of heartbreak and a lot of missed opportunities and then to be able to direct your learning towards more relevant courses for your population that you treat. So let’s try and keep your education as relevant as possible. So hope you enjoy that Protrusive Pearl. And let’s join Ems Courtney now on this episode on burnout, something very serious and picking and choosing your CPD

Main Interview:
[Jaz] Ems Courtney, welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. I’m so happy that I’ve got a fellow Protruserati on the show today. All the way from sunny New Zealand. Please tell us a little bit about yourself, Ems.

[Emma]
Thank you, Jaz. I’m just I’m stoked to be here and to be able to give back to the community because I’ve really enjoyed my experiences. My name’s Emma Courtney. I’m a Liverpool graduates of 2000. I have been in New Zealand since 2005, after a five year stint in the Royal Navy, and I’m a mom of three. Practice part time in private practice and the rest of my time, I’m either studying so at the moment I’m studying for a positive psychology diploma, or I’m blogging and podcasting also.

[Jaz]
Yes, Fang Farrier. Odder name. Love it. Tell us about your podcast, what inspired you? What kind of themes you discuss?

[Emma]
So it’s a lot about probably the mental health aspect side of it, but how to deal with stressors that we come across in every day that people maybe take for granted that they’re just things that they have to put up with or have always been there. And things they might not think that they could do better and come out at the end of the day better and have a higher energy clinical day, but have you know more energy and time for themselves when they come home to because it can be quite a draining career if you let it. So just Yeah, trying to save people from burnout, which is ultimately kind of where I started my journey with that side of things.

[Jaz]
One, this is exactly why I’m speaking about burnout. And it’d be great. It’s always great to hear the different guests and their own personal stories and experiences. So I guess what I want to start is just share your story about moving and if it ties in with burnout fair enough, but just moving to New Zealand, because a lot of people want to know, explore that possibility. I’m sure you get message all the time from people in the UK, like, ‘Hey, how do you do this thing called moving to New Zealand as a dentist kind of thing? Right? I mean, I was bombarded with that when I was in Singapore, and I came back and henceforth I made the very first episode of podcast, expat dentists in Singapore. And that’s how the podcast funnily enough began, because I got sick and tired of being on the phone to someone every single day, explain and answering the same questions. So I want to ask you, what took you to New Zealand? What was it like? What’s your story behind that?

[Emma]
So it probably started at Uni. I started to get interested in New Zealand in terms of a holiday destination, not necessarily somewhere to live. My exposure to it was through TV and movies. So I’d seen a lot of things that were set there. And I’d seen those beaches and those mountains. And I mean, this is pre.. [Jaz] Are talking Lord of the Rings? [Emma] This is pre Lord of the Rings. So yeah, so the first trip there, they were actually still filming Lord of the Rings. So yeah, no, pre Lord of the Rings. It was like the piano and the TV series, Hercules and Xena. And they were just, it was just all outdoors and breathtaking landscapes and I am an outdoors person. So I love to get, you know, strap the boots on and pack on the back and go off, record tramping here in New Zealand, but hiking. And I’ve always had that in the back of my mind. And when I graduated, I’ve got a friend that was doing a gap year or an away in Australia, and we’re based in Sydney. So I’d got a couple of months before I had to join the Navy. So I graduated. And then I didn’t have to go straight into a job I had until September or late September. So I thought well, I’ll go to Australia. I’ll catch up with them. And we’ll travel around Australia for I think it was six weeks, we’ve got plans, I’ve got a return trip to Sydney. And then about a month before I asked you to go they turned up on my doorstep because they’d had financial problems and had to come back so I was left with this. So that’s it for this return to a trip to Sydney, which isn’t a bad place to be at but suddenly having to kind of plan six weeks whereas I was just going to coast along and just kind of get a ride. And it dawned on me that the place I really wanted to go was New Zealand. So I did spend four weeks in Australia and I went up the east coast but I kind of tripped in a side trip of Manchester to squeeze in a side trip to Auckland and then did some traveling around the North Island and just fell in love with the place so much so I went back the following year to kind of do the North Island properly well as properly as you can do it in kind of two weeks. I suppose within the Navy I was very privileged in that I had paid leave I mean that’s something I’ve never seen since that’s always a bonus and then I did a MaxFacts SHO job in my fourth year there, so kind of four years out of dental school. And that was it. It was a big year. It was a stressful year I’ve got my MFDs under my belt and I managed to kind of accumulate three weeks leave together. And I so I’m going to go back and I’m going to see the South Island, and it kind of coincided with my commission was coming up in the Royal Navy. So you sign up for five years, and then there’s a board for extension, and that was kind of coming up. And I think it was gonna be just after Christmas. I was considering

[Jaz]
Sounds like remortgaging your house.

[Emma]
Yeah. The next stint was going to be another 13 years, I think or something like that. So yeah, it was going up for the medium career commission. And then I was considering specializing. So what to do there, whether to stay with the Navy, because it might not have happened immediately. But they’re very good in terms of CPD and looking after you say I felt sure that I would specialize in something, had I stayed on, and I was looking at outside, I wasn’t too keen on going straight into the NHS from the experience I’d had in the Navy was quite again, privileged, I would say. And yeah, I looked at

[Jaz]
And working in the Navy, just to put some context and some ideas for people who may be considering that route. What, how many patients would you see? Is it kind of like private practice, you get to do what you want, or was there a bit of the treadmill effect and requirements? Just give us an idea of that.

[Emma]
So I’ve never worked on the NHS, I’m not a great one for exact comparisons. But in terms of kind of comparing it to the private dentistry I do now. Timing and time for patients was reasonably similar. It’s more focused on getting people dentally fit. So you’re just, I mean, I suppose that it’s more kind of in line with NHS dentistry in terms of you not trying to go above and beyond to try and get people out of pain and functional, and so that they’re not going to experience toothache at sea or whilst they’re away and things like that. So we weren’t kind of pushed timewise. But we did have a moment, I suppose our figures that we were accountable for where what percentage of our patient base would dentally fit. So with the Navy, that would, you’d got lots of people going to sea without a dentist and then they’d come back and they’d need sorting out. I was actually based on submarine base for a lot of that time, which was a bit different, they have a lot more kind of base time. But yeah, just you weren’t seeing as many patients, as I understand, you’d see on the NHS a day, you had a bit more freedom of treatment, but then you were quite restricted in terms of materials you could use, there was a budget for crowns for the year, not per dentist. But if you wanted to kind of like fly a crown, towards the end of the financial year, you might find it was kind of like now not this time round. But there was no problems between, you know, kind of root canal and exo, it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a financial choice. And it was very good in terms of you, sound horrible to say you didn’t need consent, of course, you need to consent for treatment. But they weren’t paying patients, you were on a salary, you have a lot more freedom to just, as a new grad, it was excellent, because you could just get that volume under your belt, get that all the basic stuff that you’ve been taught with [Jaz] get that 10,000 hours in. [Emma] Yeah. And without the pressure of feeling the need to suddenly accelerate to implants or crowning everything you see or

[Jaz]
And not having to discuss money. I mean, that’s something that is a strange thing when you enter private practice from dental school, right? So yeah, I imagine you don’t have to do that.

[Emma]
And that, I guess, is a double edged sword because it was great as a new graduate. And it took an awful lot of practice. It took a lot of pressure off practice, but when you come out as five years, or whether it be 16 years or 20 years graduate, and you realize that actually, you’re probably more suited to the private dental world because of the experiences you’ve had is that suddenly nobody’s mentioned money and it becomes Yeah, I guess the later you leave learning about those conversations and how to have those difficult conversations, not just about the money side of things, but also about the consent side of things because you didn’t in the Navy have, well, my time you didn’t have patients asking for a certain treatment that maybe was borderline appropriate or not necessarily destined for long term success and having those really difficult conversations because I think that’s a skill in itself. And that was something I felt quite dropped in the deep end when I did start, but you know, we get there. So yes, I came over here on a working holiday visa that came with a brochure on picking fruit. So I’m still under 30 so you could come over for a year I think it was at the time. I got my first job through the BDJ actually. Just an advert in there and I was, it was incredibly surreal as anyone that’s had an experience with recruiting in New Zealand because this has certainly been for most of the jobs I’ve had here as it’s very casual. I’ve kind of, I’ve been told I was getting a phone call that was going to be you know, coming interview for this job. And I’d braced myself for something formal. It was, I was in Gibraltar at the time, so I was in the mess and it was, you know, like a million degrees with no aircon. And I sat there on my bed in this tiny room and I was all set up for it. And I’ve got my CV out in front of me and all prepped. And it was just kind of, it was just like a general conversation about say you like New Zealand, Do you want a job and that was pretty much it [Jaz] Excellent. [Emma] And then the logistics of registering with the dental Council and stuff like that I’d actually gone through a company that are still around called [LANZ], which is an acronym LANZ which is Locums, Australia, New Zealand, I think is what it stands for. Okay. And they they recruit from the UK to for Australia and New Zealand. And although I didn’t use them to find a job in the end, they do that too. But they walked me through the process in terms of applying for a practicing certificate and things like that because the degrees [equivalent] so you don’t have to sit a practical exam. Yeah, but you do have to sit like an open book theory exam on local practices, Māori culture and Pacific culture and prescribing I, cause you’ve worked in Australia, haven’t you? Jaz, was that right?

[Jaz]
Singapore actually it was Singapore.

[Emma]
Okay. I don’t know whether that’s I think that’s reasonably in line with kind of what Australia do and it’s how it put it down. It’s like a mixture between American and European practices, both in prescribing and yeah, just it’s a bit of a blend. So it’s not massively far off. But there are one or two things that are kind of same same, but different. So yeah. And then I came over I managed to get, I applied for residency when I got here because it was on the high priority list at the time. I’m not sure if it is now. And yeah, so I had that within six months. And I met my now husband within that time as well. And yeah, I was working up near Auckland, and he was moving down to Christchurch and I didn’t particularly want, I wasn’t really interest in Christchurch, just having a lovely time in Auckland. But but you know what? This guy seems like the real deal. We’ll give it a go. And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go home. And well, it did so. So here we are.

[Jaz]
Amazing. And then so you now you move to Christchurch?

[Emma]
Yep. So that’s where I am now. [Jaz] Okay [Emma] I’ve been here since 2006.

[Jaz]
Well, tell us a little bit about, you mentioned about burnout and some of the big themes. So the two big themes are really explored you is burnout and planning CPD. That’s the kind of the main thing. And I think they can go hand in hand for example, if you do too much CPD, and you do too much at work, and so much going on your life and you experience burnout, and you’re not an effective learning, you’re not effective family member, you’re not effective friend and all these kind of things. Do you have a personal story with burnout?

[Emma]
Yes, so I mean, I didn’t ask many people. I didn’t know I’d burnt out at the time. And it wasn’t something that was talked about as much as it is now, thankfully, so something that people are more aware of. I just felt broken. I suppose if I had to pick a starting point, because that I mean, the definition of burnout includes the fact that it’s a chronic state, it kind of creeps up on you. It’s not an overnight thing by any means. And for me it probably started with the earthquakes here in Christchurch. So we had some major earthquakes in 2010, 2011 which we practice through and but it was a huge shake up I mean, half the city was pretty much kind of destroyed if not immediately but needed rebuilding including our practice needed had to be moved off its foundations and rebuilt and things like that. And we anyone that had any experience of earthquakes know that there’s lots and lots of aftershocks which makes life interesting, makes practicing life interesting. And [?] oh my goodness. Well it’s a bit like being at sea. You don’t realize how

[Jaz]
So as you doing your crown prep, your handpiece is just like bouncing around.

[Emma]
Yeah, it’s kind of so, I suppose you get more attuned to general movements anyway, after an earthquake, you’re kind of waiting for them and anticipating aftershocks. But if you’ve ever worked in a city or on a main road and you have like a really huge truck go by and it rumbles the building that’s kind of like your real base level, like kind of on the Richter scale, maybe like 2, 2.3 something 2 to 3 kind of side of it as it just you get a bit of a movement. And then beyond that, it ramps up but you normally get a bit of a start to it doesn’t tend to jolt straight in so yeah, so you realize how quickly you can kind of get instruments out of people’s mouths and foots off pedals. But I think it was one of those things, I didn’t think about it at the time, because you just get on with it. But it’s another source of chronic stress. You’re running on cortisol. You’re running on adrenaline, and it’s not for weeks or months. It’s for years, I mean, we’ve still got stuff being rebuilt now. And yeah, it just kind of, it’s hard to describe, but it was at the time. I mean, we were without a flushing toilet for six months, we had no water for two weeks, the roads were trashed, the local facilities around the side of town were so like all the gyms and the whole community halls, everything that kind of had a community sent to [us all], or part of routine was kind of gone from this side of town, managing small children and working out what to, their managing patients and their anxiety. And the I mean, it’s as anyone that’s practiced for a while be aware, you know, the dental chair goes back, and it can be a bit of a psychiatry couch, in terms of the stories you hear and the experiences of your patients. And what they were going through. Our practice was on the edge of the red zone. And so we were zone, the red zone was houses that weren’t going to be rebuilt, and were waiting to be paid out by insurance or various things like that. But those people would flush the toilet and it would the sewage would come up in the lawn. And this was like a year later. And just living in just real third world conditions in a first world kind of country. It was. Yeah, it’s a lot of shared trauma, I guess. And I think anybody individually, if you talk about kind of burnout is that everyone’s got, we’ve all got this capacity to cope with stress. And as dentist, I think we take it for granted that we’re actually really good at it. We have a really stressful job. But for the main part, you know, we, you know, manage it like a boss. It’s just so natural to us that it just comes off. But the problem tends to be when you have life events that increase that level of stress. So I always kind of look at it as like being stress and your coping tools has been like an arms race, one will bring the other up. So we need a certain level of stress and a certain level of challenge to bring up our coping mechanisms and skills and grow and move forward. But the problem can be as it’s going like this as if you have a life event like a divorce or a death or is suddenly your stress goes up and there’s a lag, you can’t just suddenly bring those resilience skills up to meet it. So those tend to be kind of the most kind of at risk times that if you’re under a lot of stress, and you have events like that, particularly if they happen in short succession. And you don’t necessarily have the support, you need to kind of go through them, then those are going to put you at risk of depression, and burnout. But I kind of like into it. Because I do a bit of speaking when I talk to dental crowds here, I would say that it’s like not just having a death in the family. But suddenly everybody you know, had that same death. So it’s not you just kind of going up here. Because in that way your community can support you and they can bring you up because they’re not under the same stress. They’ve got the capacity and reserve to help kind of you out. But when the whole community is going through it like with COVID, It’s exactly the same. It’s hard, because you’re dealing with all your patient stresses and you’re dealing with all you know, you’re dealing with the stresses of everybody you meet, everybody’s on a short fuse and having, not necessarily having a bad day, but it’s not necessarily at their best self or their most tolerant self. And it then makes it very, very difficult. And I think that that’s one thing the earthquakes have taught me is that it’s a long recovery. We want it to be a short recovery. I remember it and the main quakes here with February 2011. And most of like the accommodation stuff was trashed the sports grounds the rugby fields are trashed, and it was the year we were hosting the World Cup. And Christchurch we’re going to pay hosting England. And the in those first day is everyone’s Oh, you know, we’ll be back on track for the World Cup in like October or whenever it was. And, I mean, that’s human nature to have that hope. But it’s a long game [Jaz] That optimism [Emma] and COVID is going to be the same. It’s forever changed our landscape. It’s forever changed how we are going to practice dentistry. And it’s another trauma that we’re going to have to be aware of not just from our patients, but from our staff and our colleagues in terms of everyone’s dealing and managing with it in different ways. And that stress is putting stresses on other things that we can’t see like at home, like marriages, and relationships and health, all sorts of things. Sorry, I’ve gone on a bit of a sidetrack.

[Jaz]
No, I’m just trying to know. That’s fantastic. Your input and devastating what you’ve experienced in terms of earthquakes and the impact it had on you and your community. Was clinical dentistry a source of stress for you that you think contributed to your period of burnout? Or do you really think that it was mostly what you’re going through with the earthquakes that was responsible for your personal story of burnout?

[Emma]
Ah, combination. So I mean, the earthquakes didn’t help. I was also I’ve got two children under two at the time of the quakes. And then, two years later, I had my daughter who, I don’t look at it as a stress, but it isn’t, I suppose it’s there are extra things that need doing in terms of she has a Quadriplegia. So she has a disability. So she did require more care, particularly more so when she was, you know, kind of under five and working three days, with three kids under five for a while. So at preschool, and it just puts an awful lot of strain on you’re not sleeping properly, as much as you’d like to think you’re kind of functioning well, it’s that you’re just pushing, I’ve just been pushing all the boundaries for a long time. And I suppose you only have so much energy to give. So my response to that had been to almost kind of withdraw, you know, like Dentistry was just something to get through, to afford to do the other stuff, to facilitate the things that needed doing it, it took kind of a backseat in priorities. I was at a position at that stage where financially wasn’t great. There’s no maternity leave as such here. No paid leave, no paid sick leave. So obviously, when you’ve got children, and you’ve got to take a day sick for them, that’s no pay to. And all of those things start to kind of creep in and be a pressure and part of me, I guess just I would have much preferred to have just been at home and be the mom that I wanted to be rather than being in work. But that financial side of things also cuts down what you can, what’s available to you CPD wise. So I had not neglected my CPD, but it had been just online through journals and stuff that was local and free and didn’t take up too much time because I couldn’t really afford the clinical time off either. And I think first actually, I kind of broke physically, which is something people don’t talk about with burnout is that when you’re that rundown, and you’re that fragile, it’s a whole body effect. It’s not you know, you don’t, you can’t just separate mind and body, you, I hurt my neck taking a tooth out for the random things to do. And I couldn’t raise my arms. So I didn’t want to take time off work because I didn’t have time to take, you know, I wasn’t gonna be paid for my time off work. And you kind of battled through it. But I’d have days where it would go into spasms and I just have to kind of canceled my day at 10 o’clock, you know, I’d come in my neck would go and I’d have to go. Went down the medical side of things and actually ended up seeing the All Blacks doctor at the time, because she deals with a lot of neck injuries through rugby. And and she said to me, she says, Can’t you do something else? So can you not just not be clinical? And got the end of the orthopedic lab. Just kind of like you know, it’s almost like a you have a neck and compatible with dentistry. Well, what are you going to do? Can you sideline outfits? Well, not really. And the only solute physical solution they had to that was I think they wanted to inject cortisone between my vertebrae or something like that. I don’t know something along those lines. Suddenly they didn’t really appeal. But in the meantime, I’ve actually become a personal trainer. And it’s like, well, I shall, I’ll find a way to fix this, surely, it’s just timing rehab. And that worked out. But when you physically having issues like that, so that was leading me to having kind of time off and unpredictable time off, which then leads to canceling patients and messing around patients in terms of because we know how it is you can’t cancel them, but only if you can get hold of them to actually stop them coming in, or all sorts of kind of funny things.

[Jaz]
It’s always Sod’s law, that when you cancel that patient the next time your neck would go would affect the same patient. And it’s Sod’s law that. It’s just Yeah,

[Emma]
And I had one of these and it turned into a complaint. And it was a really nasty complaint. And in the end, there was nothing to answer to as unfortunately, most of the nasty complaints are because it’s more emotions and communication, but I wasn’t firing on all cylinders with those. Because one of the, as I say, I didn’t know I’d burnt out. But one of the components of burning out is that emotional exhaustion that kind of depersonalizing and trying to distance yourself from things but and at the time, when you’re in it, you think, Well, I’m doing enough, I’m not gonna go over and above, but I’m doing enough and you’re almost in like a protective self defense. You know, I’m only going to do this because this protects me, but patients pick up on it in the same way that they pick up on, if you’re feeling rushed, or if you’re feeling stressed. And they will take their own or put their own story in their own meaning to that. And this lady. [Jaz] Perception is reality. [Emma] Yeah, I thought it meant that I didn’t care about what was going on with her. That, and again, this is someone that in hindsight, I would say was another person that had also been through at the time, you know, six years worth of post earthquake, had her own stuff going on, and that this was the final straw for her. And I had that and I had another Oh gosh, the most ludicrous complaint that was a pain to deal with as well, I had, we’d done a, like a voluntary Day, which actually, I would never do again, that sounds really heartless I won’t do free for three days again, because I’d had someone come in and I don’t know how they’d found the way into the books the criteria for the day where you could have a checkup or a simple filling or simple extraction for no charge. Nothing complex, just almost kind of like pain management. But it was also for carers, and people who had just had that distraction, which is a great cause. And 90% of the day was very rewarding. I had someone came. Come in but didn’t really know what they wanted, it was a very confusing situation. But the short story is that I found a upper six, I think it was that had what I can only describe as like a bin lid filling that opened and closed on it. So it’s like it must had a GI with a pin somewhere that was keeping it on. But it’d been dressed for a root canal forever ago, and just been left. And I found this and I said, Well, you know what would, I can’t do root canal for you. If you particularly want the tooth out, I can take it out. Or I can just kind of dress it so it’s not gonna fall apart and you in the next wee while or whatever it was. So I addressed it. And then he came back to the practice a couple of times because he was confused about something. And I explained and I went through his notes and this and the other. And then I got a formal complaint through to say that I’d taken his tooth out without his consent, which hadn’t happened. But it is one of those things. You think it’s one of those things that, Yes, everybody’s got a right to complain. And we have to answer to them. But it was another stressor on this. And then amongst this, I just, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be at work. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Dentistry. I didn’t want to, I would go into a cold sweat if I saw I got a call on my phone when it wasn’t a work and it was from work. I didn’t, I withdrew. I didn’t want to go to staff functions. I didn’t want to have anything else to do with dentistry outside of dentistry, and that impacted my CPD as well. I did what I had to but I didn’t want to go sit in a room of dentists and I didn’t want to hear how great everybody else’s experiences were when I felt broken when I felt that I couldn’t do it and I didn’t know why. That I hadn’t been able to fix myself and the things that I had found easy and had just been second nature for so many years were so difficult and so stressful. And I just I

[Jaz]
What you described there Emma’s of the cold sweats and feeling broken and not wanting to socialize your peers in the same way they used to. Unfortunately, a few of my colleagues have told me the same feelings about about work. And that’s what I knew, Okay, we need to talk or the, you know, my friend needs help, or this might, this colleague of ours needs help. So how makes up any dentist who could be listening to this may be going through a rough patch in life, we are humans first, dentist second. So as a human, there may be relationship issues, like you mentioned divorce as an example, for example, there could be something catastrophic going on in life or in their lives, and then that could be feeding them. And they could be having very similar emotions, feelings, experiences that you’ve described. So maybe we can take learn from your experiences, how did you overcome the burnout? How do you recognize it? How do you overcome it? And so that we can inspire and give hope to any dentist who may be in need.

[Emma]
So recognizing it was months later, so I got to a point where I just knew that it, it wasn’t working, I couldn’t fix it from where I was. I had tried things, I tried getting interested in new procedures. I’d got, my boss was very good in terms of trying to get me interested in other things and other avenues to find something that could help kind of drive me through [Jaz] Get a spark inside. [Emma] Yeah, get a spark. Because he could. I mean, you think, I guess you think you kind of operating on just like a level but your colleagues can see that you’re just on this downward trend, and they can see you lose interest and see things being different. I mean, I’d been at that practice 10 years, I think had been with a lot of the same personnel. And in the end, I took a break. In the end, I actually stopped and I left and I thought I would never set foot in a surgery again, I thought I couldn’t do it. I thought and I didn’t. And I still didn’t know what I was burnt out. And I still I didn’t I mean, I was quite probably depressed, but I wasn’t diagnosed with anything. Because I don’t know, I think it’s part of that kind of perfectionism that we have is that it’s me and it’s mine to fix alone, which is nonsense for anyone that’s listening to this. There’s teams around you and people that would love to help lift you back up. And, John, that time I decided, right? Well, I’m going to go be a personal trainer, I’ve got a qualified personal trainer, I’m going to coach. I did some sports and nutrition stuff. But after a couple of months, I started to miss it. And the national conference here, the NZDA conference was featuring a psychologist who is quite humorous, and it’s actually as it turns out married to a dentist. But he was doing that the main presentation on stress in dentistry. And I mean, I still had in the back of my head, I still didn’t understand what had gone on. And I wanted to know, I wanted to know. So I went along and there was this, he did this amazing presentation, which was life changing in itself. And I was sat there not literally in the front row, because I was like I’m gonna absorb all of this. This is what I’m here for. And I’d already kind of started along the lines of wanting to try and help make dentistry less stressful for people. So anyway, I sat there through that, but what I hadn’t realized or hadn’t really acknowledged was immediately following it was Dr. Fiona Muir, who was presenting the findings of the NZDA wellness survey and what they done in 2016, which wasn’t published until I think last year or so. But what they did was they did a big cross sectional survey that went out to most NZDA members. In fact, I actually remember being late for work because I was filling it in, because it was one of these, you know, one of those ones where you pick and it’s like you are 2% through this survey like it was, I remember doing and she suddenly painted a picture of burnout. And as she was describing it, and she was saying what was involved. I just I literally kind of like, it was a real lightbulb moments like that was me though. And I started I was just crying. I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t help myself. There was at the front

[Jaz]
This is at the conference? You were there, the covering just crying.

[Emma]
All these stoic people sat around me and she was telling my story on stage. And I just I couldn’t believe it. I’d never. And I kind of came out of that. And I was almost in shell shock for the rest of the conference. In fact, it was like a morning tea break afterwards and ended up on one of the stands with some of the reps that I knew. And I was just, you know, kind of sat down and just explaining kind of what gone on and what I’d suddenly realized that it wasn’t me, that this was something that happened to loads of dentist in fact, the survey had found that over a third of New Zealand dentists that have completed did it and it was a statistically significant number I can’t remember what but identified as burntout or with suicidal ideation, a third of the basis of the study [Jaz] That’s just terrible. [Emma] And another site oh my goodness, I kind of went from relief to knowing that it wasn’t just me to actually being quite angry that I hadn’t been prepared for this. Why is nobody talking about this? Why is it you know, was I just not paying attention at dental school, you know, kind of what’s going on. And from there, I started to kind of work back and piece together, how it happened to me in terms of what had gone on that the physical injury turning into complaints, turning into a lack of faith in my own treatment, and trying to avoid more complicated treatment, leading to probably borderline supervised neglect, because it was easier not to do risky treatments than to feel like I was risking complaint kind of judging patients on past experiences, I’ve seen this kind of patient, I’ve seen this kind of treatment before, I don’t want to part of it being overly anxious about focusing on negative outcomes. And in that I’d seen yet the stress and the coping with all the things that had gone on with life for the last 10 years. That connection, and that I’d really I self isolated, which is quite common thing to do when you’re depressed or down or running, is to withdraw because you don’t want to bring other people down, you don’t want to be the Debbie Downer in the conversation that turns the happy, excited conversation to, you know, you don’t want to be that person. And you don’t want to say it out loud. And as I say the CPD side of things, I could see that I’m someone that I love learning, I’ll take a course and I run with it. And the only thing that saved me from worse than burnout was the fact that I had started on this fitness journey. And I suddenly realized, after trying to do as little dental learning for as long as I could, that I missed learning that it really it woke me up, it lit me up, it made everything else easier, not just what I was studying. It made homies, it made work easier. So I started off as a Zumba instructor as you do. And then I did some certifications for my group fitness. And that all got back into physiology and I thought oh, and then I did my personal training. And every time you think you’ve left the Krebs cycle behind it finds you again if you enter. And then I did some Sports and Nutrition coaching, which got into kind of like the psychology side. And I found all of this just lit me up. So for a while there, I kind of get rehabbed myself out of it by throwing myself into learning things that weren’t dentistry, that weren’t bringing up those memories and associations and got me back in love with learning and growing and doing things. And then I started picking courses, that dental courses that did like me that. I did just because I wanted to not because it was something I felt I should know, or I shouldn’t do. So I would say

[Jaz]
At this point, you are not doing any clinical dentistry, right?

[Emma]
No. So I took maybe nine months off. And but I think the other thing that I realized with the time off is that Dentistry was such a huge part of me, of my life. It’s very difficult when you know, because it is, it’s part of your identity, I am a dentist to suddenly put that down and completely dissociate from it. But also going into something like personal training is actually you go into a different kind of realm of work and you realize that you’ve no experience, that you’ve got other experiences you can draw into it, and you suddenly start to feel actually, I had loads of experience at what I was doing, you know, like I wasn’t Yeah, it’s that you suddenly start to value the experience you had when you have something else to compare it to. And I initially went back in as a locum I did some work on the West Coast, which is reasonable drive away. I’m on the east coast of New Zealand. And, but it was actually, it was very therapeutic in that I knew it was locum. So I knew short term, it sounds horrible to say that I knew that they weren’t my patients, but they weren’t going to be my patients for a long time. So that there was a lot of pressure off, there was no, they didn’t know my story,

[Jaz]
It would ease you back into it better than going full on full time into where you were before perhaps.

[Emma]
Yeah, but it was like, Well, I can angle like, into kind of like PTSD, it was very hard going in there. My anxiety levels were through the roof. I would see things on the day, like

[Jaz]
So your first day back at the clinic, you had the the cold sweats again, and the anxiety again?

[Emma]
I would say, Gosh, I would say it was probably the first probably took a good month to get that like kind of it was almost like exposure therapy, you know, I kind of put yourself in there and see those things that had been your triggers before. And just ride them through and realize they weren’t as bad as you remembered them that this time it could be completely different. But it probably took me because I went from there into some local kind of part time jobs, it probably took me the best part of a year or two, to get comfortable. And to come home. And my husband would be like, Geez, you’re happy. It’s like, yeah, I’ve actually come home from work happy, you know, like, I’ll be in a good mood at the end of the working day. And tell you something, one of the tools I got there actually was your podcast. And this might sound silly, but I would listen to your podcast on the way to work. And I will use it to because I’ve got like a 30, 35 minute commute and I listen to you on double speed, it’s quite nice to hear you regularly.

[Jaz]
Well done for keepin for keeping up to 2x.

[Emma]
And it was kind of like my, you’re kinda like my pep talk for work. I would have you, I’d have you in the car. It was like having someone sat in the car next to you talking dentistry but not just talking dentistry, but being super enthused about it. And I would literally kind of get to work and whatever had been discussed and be like, Ah, I could try that out today or I could have a go at looking at. And I started just switching that mindset. And I still listen to you on the way to work, I don’t actually listen to your podcast any other the time [Jaz] That means a lot to me. [Emma] I, it just sets me up for the day. And it’s really helped bring that spark back in, that spark to suddenly say, Well, actually, there are bits of this that I really enjoy. And there are bits I didn’t appreciate that I could find enjoyable because I hadn’t looked at them for so long. So nothing kind of massive, but just you know, small things Oh, I’ll try that with a matrix strip, or maybe I’ll try that with a wedge or maybe, you know, and just enough that I’d kind of gone from by the time I’ve gone from home. I’d kind of left that behind and gone and completely prepped myself for day of dentistry. And would share mine with that. And at Darfield where I’ve worked two practices at the moment where with my colleague Julia, shout out to Julia. I introduced her to the podcast and we come in and we chat about your episodes together which again.

[Jaz]
It’s been great to connect with Julia she is and thank you for recommending her to SplintCours even both in on and Julia has been, you know, whizzed through it and yourself as well. So it’s great to her to have you too, so keen, enthusiastic about it as well. And it’s been amazing. I think the podcast for me, has helped me to connect with people like you all over the world as is really special to have that connection, I think. Or people who become like minded, little bit geeky, little bit funny in that way, but it helps to stimulate your day, I think.

[Emma]
Yeah, and I think that’s probably something to be said for someone that’s finding it very hard to enjoy their dentistry or feel though they’ve lost that kind of spark is that it’s okay to borrow someone else’s enthusiasm. It’s okay to kind of tag on, you know, hang on the coattails of it because it is infectious, and it will rub off. It’s one of those things. I mean, it’s been studied in positive psychology a lot is you know, like the contagion of smiles and laughter and things like that, it does, it just helps and it can be the first step on that ladder that you need. It can be the spotlight in the darkness to just show you that first step so that you can get on and then start to make the rest of the journey around. It doesn’t, there’s not necessarily one spot that you find it but that’s just the one thing you need is just that one, that one boost up. And

[Jaz]
And you can get that from anywhere. I mean, any thing that you enjoy or that inspires you, it could be nature from wherever for you, you found it from fitness, from reconnecting with learning, just being a learner for you was a big driver for you to get you back to you know, your best you.

[Emma]
Yes, exactly.

[Jaz]
But if I was to suggest that perhaps in hindsight, do you wish and perhaps the advice that maybe we’re giving to anyone who’s going through a really tough patch, is to seek help from somewhere, obviously, you didn’t identify until you’re crying at that conference, that was such an epiphany for you. I feel as though perhaps you endured so much into that journey. And if only you had that lecture sooner or whatever, or you had that connection sooner, so perhaps people need to, and you said now it’s so much more widely available as well, the mental health side of things and the burnout. So you know, you should seek out help.

[Emma]
And I think, help outside of dentistry, and it doesn’t have to be kind of formalized help. Sometimes it can just be opinions, because a lot of the stuff that we kind of put up with and we think, well, that’s just got to be the way it’s got to be. It sounds horrible to say if you talk to a normal person, if you talk to someone outside of our world, they’ll just be like, That’s ridiculous. What are you, you can’t carry on, like, you know, they’ll help just put it into perspective for me. The people I work with, they’re having an occupational counseling program, which, again, I actually didn’t find out about until after I’d been through this, which is a fault in itself. But I kind of sing the number from the highest rooftop as it were now. But just I think that the stigma around mental health, around not coping and about not being able to do it all on your own because you should be able to. That’s the voice not what, yeah. Is that message is so strong and so ingrained in us that there’s a real fear and I can remember I did look, I knew that I needed some help. And I knew that I needed some psychological, I thought I needed a counselor, certainly other and I didn’t even know how to start, where to look, who to talk to, just to begin that conversation. And that was very difficult. And it shouldn’t be that difficult. It should be, I would love to see on the, I’m you have the kind of same thing I can’t remember about the recertification as with the GDC but here with the Dental Council in New Zealand you have your new recertification thing, you know, you have No, I’ve not been convicted of this. And no, I don’t have you know, I don’t have substance abuse problems. And thankfully, now they’ve put Yes, I’ve had an eyesight check, because that’s a different matter entirely. But on there, it should be Have you checked in with a mental health professional this year? Because it should be ordinary or routine or [Jaz] Very true. [Emma] It shouldn’t be something that you’ve got to be in dire need of before you seek it out. Going back to the psychologist that had presented, he started off and he said, I’ve something to confess. So I haven’t had a dental checkup for eight years. And you can hear this in take a breath from the crowd. He says, we’re still He says, My wife’s a dentist. But he turned this round to say, Now, why do you think that your mental health is going to be okay, without somebody checking in on it? How is it any different to that dental checkup? How

[Jaz]
That’s a powerful way to send a message dentist driver?

[Emma]
Yeah, how, if you had a patient with an infection, an acute infection, that and this will go on to gray zone because it’s antibiotics but the required antibiotics, you’d want them to take the antibiotics to get over so you get on with your treatment to get past that acute phase but we have such a stigma around taking antidepressants and being diagnosed with depression. When actually when we go back to that discrepancy between the high stress and that time lag between your resiliency skills coming up. If you need antidepressants here, what they’re going to give us that time to build the other resiliency skills so that you can meet the stress that you’ve got and match it. And this stigma around that is huge. And I would even go back to the definition of burnout and the World Health Organization only got around to acknowledging it or defining it in 2019, which I find quite shocking. But there you go, so they have it down as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition, a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. But to me that stigma again has not been successfully managed like, you have it because you haven’t been able to sort of

[Jaz]
Painting a picture of failure. Right?

[Emma]
Yeah, it’s, I don’t know. I mean, maybe it’s because of where I come, my experiences where I come from, but that just feels like a big finger back at you, you know, like the cause of this lies at your doorstep. And I don’t know what,

[Emma]
Well I hope what you’ve inspired for anyone exactly. You know, what I’m hoping is that anyone who’s in a tricky situation that this conversation with Ems tonight, today, it would have inspired you to seek help, because at any one point there will be humans, not just as humans who are in a low point, some will be high point. But if you’re in that low point, and it’s affecting your dentistry, affecting the care that you can give to your patients, then take lessons and it’s really lovely to hear you openly share your story, Ems, that takes courage. So thank you, and how you overcame that. That’s really, really great to hear. And it’s so good that you have your mojo back in dentistry. And you’re you know, you’re able to practice with full enthusiasm again. One other theme that I want to explore now is CPD and I we were discussing before we started to hit the record button about you’re going to go to tell me about the different cycles of CPD because the initial question was asked who is any advice to young dentist about planning their CPD because I get messaged by young dentists all the time saying, I don’t know what next course to do, or how many, you know, should I do this course, Should I do that course kind of thing. And I think you have a really profound answer on how to think differently about your CPD. So let’s get about a flavor about how to plan your CPD as a dentist?

[Emma]
So yeah, we were chatting about kind of the new graduates. And as I was explaining that, in my viewpoint, kind of, you have such a massive experience of dental school, obviously culminating and finals that you are all the time is learning things and getting your head around it. And there’s probably, you know, you look over those five years, there’s been a heavy slant towards theory learning and book learning than there has been towards the practical side of it. So in terms of kind of phases of advice that I would give for dentists is that that first kind of two, three years, is that you still, I guess you kind of consider yourself, you are up to date, because you’ve just finished finals, you’ve got your BDS or whatever your qualification is. And you actually need to kind of take pause to reflect on that, absorb it and practice it. Because the, you’ll have far more in terms of kind of knowledge than you’ll have experienced at that stage. And just really get the volume under your belt to put all of these things you’ve learned into practice to see what you enjoy what works for you, what you do find anxiety inducing or doesn’t feel quite the same as it did at dental school. And I’m not saying neglect your CPD because we’ve got requirements that we need for recertification. But really just getting it done is enough. So the easiest way to get through it. And that might be through a journal and online things, it might be subscribing something that has all your content for the year just looked at it so that it’s just one less stress, and one less thing to worry about. And then as you come out of that you should start to get a better picture of what it is you want to do or what it is you want to improve upon. And it’s not. I think there’s an over emphasis, and it comes from dental school, because it’s about any education system, really, is that education systems are about promoting further up the education system, you know, so dental school, you know, that you, the specialists are held in regarding the consultants are held in regard and that the career pathway that you’re kind of shown? Or is [Jaz] The exposure that you gain here. [Emma] Yeah, yes. It’s all the exposure you gain. And it’s all that you really get to kind of talk and know about and I think, yeah, I think

[Jaz]
Which is why I wanted to be a restorative specialist, I want to go be a consultant restorative when I qualified, and that was dead set that was gonna do that.

[Emma]
Yeah. And I’ve wrestled with the thoughts about specializing my whole career even recently, I was like, more should I could, I’ve still got time in my career, I could still make use of this. And I think there’s no shame in saying that you want to be a specialist generalist, you know that. You want to be the jack of all trades, and you want to be the person [Jaz] The hardesr of all specialties. [Emma] Yeah, that you want to be the person that could be in a rural practice and deal with 90% of the things that are thrown at them and still acknowledge when you need to kind of refer on but to me, you know, that’s a superhero dentist right there. So, but that’s not, It’s not held on a pedestal. It’s, you know, it’s not glorified, it’s not seen. It’s not even really kind of illustrated as a career pathway. Because it’s not acknowledged, and there’s no title with it and there’s no formal qualification that goes with it and on all the things that we love, our certificates and our, you know, letters and all those kinds of things. So yeah, don’t be too pressured to go into specialism not to say that we need specialists and other people there that are massively suited to it. But maybe don’t make that decision one, two years out, maybe give yourself a couple of years just to, to feel out because the other thing and just you’ll know the same is that the best specialists that you refer to and have a relationship with are the ones that have had a decent general dentistry background before because they can appreciate beyond their scope. And they’re not locked into their tunnel vision of their specialty.

[Jaz]
Tunnel Vision is the best way to describe it. Absolutely.

[Emma]
Yeah. So that’s probably the first stages is concentrate on getting hours under your belt at the coalface is, you know, get some work done, get some fillings in, get what works for you. But use that time to seek out mentors. And I think people get a bit put off by the term mentor in terms of that, it might have to be some kind of formal agreement. It doesn’t, it just means learn from the experiences of those around you. And even the worst mentor will have so much to teach you. Because it might be teaching you what not to do and what you don’t want to do down the track. But those are valid lessons too. And I think people get hung up on being in sounds horrible to say bad practices or under bad bosses, because I don’t like that kind of black and white, good and bad, it just might be something that doesn’t suit you and doesn’t suit your values. But, man, if you do some time under that you’ll still learn, they’ll still have things they’ve got to the position they’re in because they’ve managed to do something right. It might not be something you agree with. And yeah, it’s just everybody around you as a mentor, your senior nurse, your hygienists, particularly, and your therapists, if you’ve got anybody says or say anybody that’s senior to you has got experience in this setting that you don’t have and that you can learn from. So yeah, so look for mentors, don’t worry so much about your CPD. And then the next phase is starting to think about those things about what’s your place in dentistry, and you’re young enough that you can explore things and backtrack, you know, I did my maxfacts here and my MFDs. And I was gonna specialize. It’s not that I backtrack, but actually, I don’t feel the need to see this through, I can do something different. But, again, as we were talking the, I think the danger zone, and this was this was highlighted actually, in the results of this study, I can’t remember exactly, but the peak kind of risk for burnout and things was about that kind of 10 to 20 year points. And the good news for those of you who are in it is it gets better after that. Whether that’s just with experience, in terms of kind of life experience and dental experience and just chilling out because you’re on the other side, you know, the more Twilight side of your career, I guess, I don’t know. But apparently, the results of the survey say that it does get better after that. But that’s the time when you probably need the most support, the most help with your motivation, the most, you need to seek that inspiration from somewhere else, because that’s when it’s going to be struggling, you’re likely to be struggling because it was also the time that people are having families, getting married. People you have got married and it hasn’t been the greatest to having those painful early divorces, you’re buying houses, all these commitments that suddenly go up and all of a sudden, it’s not that dentistry got any more stressful, it’s just that life around it got more stressful. And that can make it harder to be enthused about work because all of a sudden you’ve got other things that are starting to compete priority wise and it’s not that they’re, not that you should view them as competing, but it’s that you shouldn’t necessarily neglect your working life as well because it is a large time percentage of what you do. And you’re at that stage where you’ve got you know, 10 years experience under the belt and you run the risk of you know, day in day out syndrome. I’ve just got to get through this and you know, it’s just another filling or it’s just another crown

[Jaz]
Also risking or being on autopilot and losing the love of the minutiae of the detail and the care and that fire in your belly, you lose it, you can lose it. And I remember my trainer in DF1 telling me that at 10 year point is roughly when a lot of dentists may get some complaints because of the complacency, right? They’ve done extraction so many times before and I take the you know, don’t check the medical history or little mistake, because you’re just running on autopilot. When you’re running on autopilot, then, you know, it can not lend itself to the best kind of care that you can give customized to our patients. So yeah, I think you’re so right in that phase, you can fall into these traps.

[Emma]
Yeah. And this, something springs to mind is what you’re just describing there’s mindlessness. So in terms of kind of you just operating on autopilot, you’re going off rules that you’ve been given ages ago. And you just, you kind of your present actions are dictated by past events. And,

[Jaz]
And is dragging and is the complete opposite of the flow theory, you know, the flow theory is that you’re completely engrossed in something, and time you look at the timer, or where have the three hours gone, kind of thing. Whereas, yeah, when you’re, when things are dragging, it’s not a nice place to be.

[Emma]
Yeah. And it kind of ties in with Ellen Langer’s definition of mindfulness, which is different to the kind of the main one we think about that being present and things like that. And her definition of mindfulness comes down to kind of noticing what’s new and different, and being open to differences and exploring things and challenges so that you’re not operating on that mindlessness kind of front, is that you are treating everything as what is new and different here. What can I change or change up? And like, what would you say about the flow, that is, the way that the flow works is it’s that kind of graph of challenge versus skill level. And if you’re not upping your skill level, then the challenge is going to drop. And you’re going to drop into the like the corners of that graph, that once you’re outside a flow, and you get kind of arousal control, you end up in anxiety, or relaxation, or boredom, or the bottom end. So the opposite end to flow on this chart is apathy. And that’s when you’re at risk of burnout, because it ties in completely with that. So I mean, the way I plan my CPD now, because I’m, gosh, what am I? 21 years graduated? Is that I, I still take care of the basics in terms of I’ve still got my box check. And that the same that I would say for my new grads, just so that I don’t have to think about meeting the requirements. But beyond that, I look for stuff that lights me up, stuff that I can see is going to have something immediately actionable that I can take away from it. And I think we have to kind of broaden our views of what CPD is because I mean, while the weren’t podcast when I came out of dental school, but your podcasts, your blogs, your, these are your mentors from around the world that are available to you that you don’t need a formal relationship with, that you can learn from but also, yeah, but also that kind of padding out of and I guess this comes to be you know, yes, if you you can stay in general practices and be that specialist generalist is start to learn about business and marketing, even if you’re not running your own practice, start to have an appreciation of it, start to seek out communication courses, start to look into and I would something I would never think is kind of the like coaching qualifications have helped me because they’ve helped me communicate with my patients better. They’ve helped me work out what it is they really want because what they’re saying isn’t necessarily what they want. And we’re kind of stuck in a profession that still, it’s other professions sometimes feel still stuck in like the 19th century, No doctor says you do kind of the end it’s with consent and everything else. It’s not that straightforward and probably as, you saying you were talking to Sean, he would probably talked about it as well in terms of you’ve got to know what the patient actually wants. You can’t run with the first thought of Ah got this, they want that. Because then you’re, both of you are happy until the end of the treatment when you realize that you’ve satisfied your treatment outcome, but not their needs. And that’s where you’re going to come up with complaints. That’s where you’re going to have less kind of thing. So you know, even just, it sounds quite basic or dismissive. As you know, communication skills are huge. If you want to avoid complaints and have more satisfied patients and that would be a starting point for anyone. So yeah, so I make sure I’ve got my hours tied away somewhere else but the rest of it is actually personal growth, not just professional growth and things that can kind of tie into that because, as I said, it’s some of these, you might think, well, that’s not overly relevant. But you go on these courses. And sometimes it can surprise you, I can remember I went on a health and safety course, which sounds, you know, like most people would rather put nails in their eyeballs. But we had a change to our health and safety laws recently, and we went along and it was it was quite amusing because we went in and I think 90% of the dentists in there were hoping for basically just a checklist of how to comply with the new laws. Now, the guy that presented the course, he was someone that dealt with workplace accidents, and particularly workplace deaths, actually, and he had a lot of stories about not dentistry, but a lot of stories about other workplace incidences. And talking about like we were talking about on the autopilot that your highest risk is your 40 to 50 year olds that have been doing it for so long that they can do it in asleep. So the electrician that puts two wires together that an apprentice would never have gone near but they’ve been in that mindlessness state. And it’s fatal. And it was the most surprising course I’ve been on. Because it was nothing that I expected. It turned out to be about aging and resilience and mindfulness is what it turned out to be. So go explore these things. And I mean, it’s always going to be dictated by what time you want to spend, what money you want to spend, where you want to go for it. I always have my eye on something, sometimes and it’s not always the the monetary value beside. Sometimes I will spend more than I want to spend on a course because it’s either something I can’t get through any other means or medium, or it’s presented that I wouldn’t be exposed to normally. And I guess once you’ve done enough courses, you start to get that filter of Well, yeah, I can see there’s going to be value in that or I can’t and yes, sometimes you get caught out but do try and challenge yourself.

[Jaz]
And I’ve said on multiple times or podcast before for every clinical course you do, do one non clinical. And I think even you mentioned coaching, that’s an example, right? That’s something that has been made, that’s made you a better communicator with your patients. That’s an example of one because there’s only so many non clinical, but anything that could improve you and your mindset, and your demeanor and your the way you speak, your body language. These are all important things for you as a communicator, because as I was discussing with Sean today, dentistry is so little of what you do with your hands and so much more what the patients feel and the communication aspect of it. So you I think you’ll enjoy that episode. And just like I hope everyone’s enjoyed our today. CPD at the end but really, in the kindest way to share your story and makes us vulnerable. I really appreciate that. But I do feel whilst it might serve many of the Protruserati, just generally they might be listening to think okay, you know that this is interesting. But a small minority, I think this episode will really really allow them to give themselves permission to seek help. And these small numbers will be helped massively and I’m always up for helping small number of people in a big way. So Ems, thank you so much for giving up your time today, on father’s day in New Zealand and I know you said you got your husband a nice big box of meat.

[Emma]
Yes. He is a carnivorous at hearts. So yeah, it’s steak dinner today.

[Jaz]
Amazing. Well, if you have any closing comments, please tell us about your podcast. Where can we listen? What’s the full name of it?

[Emma]
Oh, yeah. So I have done courses on marketing and self promotion. This is how good I am at them because I’d forgotten to mention it the whole time. It’s Fang Farrier, which is a other words, a slang term for a dentist. That’s the name of the podcast. It’s the name of my Facebook group and my Facebook page I think ‘It’s a dentist life’, which is only different because there’s only so many times you can change the name of a dental Facebook page. So I can’t change it to find very, but yeah,

[Jaz]
Well, I’ll be sure to put the links on the show notes so people can come and listen to you more. We’ve got these different angles to share with the whole positive mental attitude and your history and fitness is very different genres that you explore non political stuff, which is so so important.

[Emma]
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been absolute pleasure. I’d say I’ve taken a lot from this community and from your podcast and SplintCourse which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend. And it’s just great to give back.

[Jaz]
What that is again, it’s so nice to be speaking to a fellow Protruserati from across the globe at different time zones just amazing. So thanks so much and have a lovely Father’s Day with your family.

[Emma]
And you have a lovely evening.

Jaz’s Outro: Well there we have it guys. Burnout and how to identify it and how to overcome it and how to plan and navigate through the world of CPD. Hoped you gained a lot of insight from that, particularly if you’re early on in your journey and you’re thinking about okay, what’s my path of learning over the next few decades. Very soon I’m a post up on Occlusal Adjustment so do check it out. And of course if you’re not part of the protrusive dental community on Facebook, what are you waiting for? Go on Facebook, search Protrusive Dental Community and join over 1700 dentists who are the producer it just like you listen and love the podcast and I love that and I really appreciate that so much