dental assistants

If you are a dentist, and you are a clinic owner, more-likely you will struggle with your human resources : associates, dental hygienists, dental assistants, receptionists, helpers, etc. You will squeeze your brain out on HOW to manage them to make sure that they will fulfill your clinic's standard.

And believe me, struggling with Indonesian dental assistants is a nightmare. Especially if she is someone whom you picked up randomly from the street. I mean : no any dental assistant's educational background.
YOU
WILL
SUFFER
EVEN
MORE

One day I ever trained 3 new assistants. 1 candidate fainted after 5 patients in a row. 1 candidate didn't show up in next day without any further explanation. And another candidate gave me a call. Apologized that she didn't want to take this job with the most ridiculous reason I ever heard : "Doc, I can't stand on seeing saliva. For me, it's disgusting."
Oh, alright.... good to know. Because sometimes you will see blood too !

Well, it's just a clinical problem. Further more, I have to teach them too to :
1. Greet my patients. Friendly, nice, polite, and not too much.
2. Dress up. And put some make up. And to updo their hair.
3. To work fast. I just can't stand on slow people. Idiot will make it even worse.
4. Use smartphone. Nowadays, my patients are all smartphone-users. And it's more convenient to remind them through whatsapp / line / viber / email instead of giving them a shocking call while they were having an important meeting -let's said.
5. To schedule my patients -which is a very very tough thing to do. I train them to simulate and simulate everything related on scheduling appointment. Because it's the hardest. They know that I don't like if I must do 5 consultations in a row, or 3 surgeries in a row, etc.
6. To speak in english. And some patients are speaking chinese.

For these reasons, I prefer to hire someone who can fulfill my standard. And it's so hard to find in Indonesia. Especially if you must struggle with local human resources who have no ambitions. Haha, but my Singaporean, Malay, Thai, and Viet colleagues are also sighing the same thing about their assistants too. Same problems in every south east asia countries. Once we ever talked about it and we couldn't stop laughing on how desperate Phuong -one of my colleague from Vietnam-. He wanted to hire anyone except Viets because he couldn't tolerate the idiot level of his locals anymore.

"She cleaned impregum that hadn't set yet with my saliva ejector and it blocked off my dental unit."
"She scheduled a child patient with no emergency issue at 10.30pm."
"She gave a reminder call to my patient at 11pm for next week appointment. 3 times in a row !"

Alright, I agree. This one was awesomely idiot. You should kick her out, Phuong !

My senior assistants are good. Now. Ya, now I can sleep well because they can manage my schedule much way better. But I also found hard times too during their first year. Training someone who is totally blind in dentistry is a real tough job. They also can train my newbies now which can save up my time and energy.

But I had invested a lot of mind and energy previously. And it's not easy. Even until today, teaching them to speak in english fluently can me scratch my own skins. But I think, as long as they have a strong willing to learn and still in the tolerable level of idiotness, you can manage to train them.

And don't forget to give them rewards too. I make a routine appreciation team gathering twice in year  so they won't curse you as an evil boss.  Having holiday together with your team is important. Be a wise leader, life is short !