Every Monday Nikki Berryman – our Business Development Manager at Pure Dental – posts about her plans and experiences from the past week.

‘We had our annual Fire Safety Training here at Pure Dental last week.

We use a local company that take care of all our Fire Protection needs from our alarm system, fire blankets through to our on-site training. They provide a really excellent, comprehensive service that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.

However I have the overall responsibility of audit, maintenance and review procedures. This involves scheduling maintenance/repairs of all equipment, scheduling training, carrying our quarterly risk assessments, reviewing the Fire Prevention Plan, monthly fire alarm ‘practice’ and daily testing of the alarms.

Of course in terms of CQC, these procedures need to be carefully documented and audited. So how do we as PMs keep on track with ongoing audits and reviews of our management procedures? The answer is robust systems – time management systems and scheduling systems.

Implementing effective systems in your practice will save so much time – I have already scheduled out 3 days next month to review all risk assessments, review and make changes to our Recruitment and Selection procedures and to review the Team Training Plans. Systems ensure control and efficiency. Are all your systems up to date?’

Every Monday Nikki Berryman – our Business Development Manager at Pure Dental – posts about her plans and experiences from the past week.

‘Another fab week at Pure last week, culminating in Jeremy and I travelling to London on Friday to listen to Chris Barrow talk about Implant marketing, at a seminar hosted by Bio- Horizons at Portland Square.

It was a great session and lovely to meet such a fab group of people. I thought that we had a fairly good handle on marketing techniques at the practice, but as usual there is always something new to learn.

This got me to thinking about training and in particular, personal development for practice managers/business managers. I’m sure that you have robust training and development plans in place for your team, but what about yourself? When did you last assess your strengths and weaknesses? The business of dentistry is rapidly changing and developing and so we need to ensure that we are always one step ahead of the game.

Alongside more formal courses and training, ask yourself this; whose blogs are you reading? What newspapers are you reading? Ask for recommendations for books in leadership / development /management; are you networking outside of the practice? Do you have a mentor? If not, get one and ask him/her for honest feedback on your performance and where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

So, a challenge for today – start thinking about your own Personal Development Plan…’

Every Monday Nikki Berryman – our Practice Manager at Pure Dental – posts about her plans and experiences from the past week.

Every Monday Nikki Berryman – our Practice Manager at Pure Dental – posts about her plans and experiences from the past week.

‘Back to work today after a really crazy but fun week!

On Thursday the whole Pure Dental team travelled to Birmingham to attend the Dentistry Show at the NEC on Friday and Saturday. What a great couple of days! There was a fantastic buzz surrounding the Show and it was obvious that a lot of people had put a lot of hard work into making it happen.

There was a great line-up of speakers including Brendon from Apex Media who spoke about the importance of social media; our very own Jason Smithson who delivered a very powerful presentation on composite resin restorations, Nigel Reece from Dental Design about Marketing Strategies and Websites and one highlight was Howard Farran’s highly engaging presentation on profitable dentistry, which raised a few eyebrows to say the least!

One common theme running throughout the two days was ‘customer care’ and how we look after our patients. From a management point of view, the role of Treatment Coordinator is an extremely effective customer relations tool.

The obvious benefit of having a well-trained TCO at your practice is absolutely sales orientated; but in addition to that, you are providing outstanding levels of customer care to your patients; they can be given limitless one-to-one sessions with an experienced member of your team who can discuss treatment options, risks/benefits, consent, fears/anxieties, finance and scheduling. What a fantastic service to be able to offer your patients, at NO COST!

In my view, providing great dentistry is also about building relationships and how we look after our patients outside of the dental chair, a TCO facility in my view is an absolute must in any contemporary dental practice’.