Bullshit jobs

Recently I’ve been reading a book by David Graeber called Bullshit Jobs. The book made me think about the work we do every day.

The contention of the book is that many jobs achieve no useful purpose. They’re like rituals that people go through but if you stopped doing them no one would notice.

Graeber defines “bullshit jobs” as “paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, though they feel obliged to pretend it is not.”

Dentistry is useful but it made me think whether all of the things that we do in the office have value. That is, if we stopped doing certain tasks would anyone notice?

Here are a few suggestions of possible dental practice BS for you to ponder.

• Morning huddle
  What does this achieve? Doesn’t everyone already know what to do? Would we be better off if we simply got on with it?

• Practice management reports
  They take time to compile but are they helpful? Does knowing that our case acceptance rate is 43% change anything? Maybe we need to be selective. If a report doesn’t cause us to take immediate action then what is it for?

• New patient forms
  Are all the questions necessary? Will it change our treatment if we know that the person has kidney disease or had their appendix removed?

• Internal forms
  Do we have annoying internal forms. In an office I visited the dentist had to fill in a form every time they dismissed a patient. It served no purpose that I could see.

• Practice managers
  I’ve seen extremely successful practices that don’t have a practice manager. I’ve also seen practices where the turnover increased after they sacked their practice manager. It made me wonder what PMs really do. Are they only there to massage the bosses ego?

• Patient reactivation
  Calling inactive patients is a job everyone hates and that has a very low success rate. In essence it is telemarketing. Is that the best use of our time?

Identifying BS jobs has benefits. First, it frees up time for useful jobs. Second, it reduces the frustration inherent in doing something is pointless.

Do you have any BS jobs in your office?