Step 7: Avoiding Burnout

In today’s world of dentistry, we are always in danger of burning out the current team. In fact, the World Health Organization refers to burnout as an “occupational phenomenon.”² In other words, it is not just fatigue, but a real syndrome. Burnout isn’t something that you can recover from in an afternoon, day off, or a vacation. If people burn out, they won’t function nearly as well, and the practice will suffer. To avoid burnout, dentists and office managers need to function as compassionate leaders, understand the individual and collective needs of team members, update systems, prioritize tasks around the systems, and work to regularly simplify the office. This is what many of the best practices do, and it has had a tremendous impact on higher levels of motivation, efficiency, and performance.