A productivity miracle

From time to time people say to me “I followed your advice”.

This tends to make me a bit nervous because I’m never sure if they are going to tell me how well it went or if it was a disaster.

This story from a dentist arrived in my inbox recently.

The dentist in question works in a pretty standard configuration with just one chair-side nurse.

The dentist’s productivity is not bad, not good, just ordinary.

On a day recently his Oral Health Therapist rang in sick.

Instead of cancelling the patients and rescheduling the dentist decided to see them all.

The key thing they had going in their favour was that the nurse who normally worked with the OHT would be helping the dentist.

That is the dentist would have two nurses instead of one.

6-handed instead of 4-handed.

Long story short, this is what happened…

The day ran well and all the patients got seen on time. The dentist not only covered their schedule but also saw a full day of patients who were booked with the OHT.

To use the dentist’s own words:

“…we blitzed it.”

You might ask, how can that possibly happen?

How can you take a full schedule and then pack in another full schedule and still run on time? That’s double the work!

Here’s the answer.

I’ve watched dentists work and with one nurse (4-handed), dentists are typically working with patients 50% of the time and waiting for things to get ready 50% of the time.

With two nurses (6-handed), dentists are typically working with patients 90% of the time and waiting for things to get ready 10% of the time.

In effect an extra nurse gives a dentist an additional 3-4 productive hours per day.

It’s the sort of thing you need to experience to fully appreciate.

If you’ve never tried 6-handed dentistry, do yourself a favour.

If you want to understand the workflow behind results like this — the mechanics, the time savings, and why the extra nurse makes such a dramatic difference — I’ve written a full Deep Dive on 6‑handed dentistry that lays it all out.

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