Dental Team Training: Building a Stronger, Unified Staff

Structured dental team training can help you develop a much stronger staff for your practice. This can enable your dental practice to operate more efficiently, ultimately leading to fewer errors, increased patient satisfaction, and a more profitable business overall.

Every staff member plays a key part in your staff’s success. Implement the right training practices to ensure that your entire dental team is getting the most out of it.

Key Elements of Effective Dental Team Training

If your dental practice isn’t providing any training to team members yet, you might wonder, “Where should I start?” Extending dental team training to your front office team, dental assistants, and other dental professionals isn’t enough. You also need to use the right dental staff training resources.

Focus on Communication and Collaboration

Training your dental team starts with emphasizing the importance of great communication. By communicating clearly and taking a more collaborative approach, your office manager, front office team, dental assistants, dental hygienists, treatment coordinators, and dentists can ensure they’re on the same page.

Excellent staff and patient communication within your dental office can result in:

• Less miscommunication
• Better patient care
• Improved patient satisfaction
• More efficient workflows

If the only thing you do when it comes to team training is push to improve staff and patient communication in your dental office, this alone should work wonders for dental team performance.

Clinical and Administrative Training for Dental Practices

New dental trends are constantly coming and going. Stay up to date by providing dental hygienists and assistants from your practice with the opportunity to take part in clinical training. Look for in-person training for dental teams or virtual training that includes online courses.

Your front office team and office managers should also get access to the latest administrative training to improve your billing, scheduling, and insurance management office procedures. Let them take advantage of the tools Weave can provide, such as digital forms and automated online scheduling, to deliver better patient experiences through revamped office policies.

Building a Unified Dental Team

Surveys have shown that 40% of people who work in the dental industry and fail to receive the proper training quit their jobs within a year and head to other dental practices. Taking the right dental team training steps can help you avoid this.

But why stop there? Work on building a more unified team for your practice as well.

Setting Clear Goals and Expectations

Does your team have clear goals and expectations you’ve established collectively? If not, change this now.

Work to create SMART goals. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-based

Use Weave’s analytics tools to track key performance indicators and monitor progress. Creating common goals will encourage your employees to work together more closely.

Continuous Learning and Development for Dental Assistants and Others

As a dental practice owner, you work to learn new tricks of the trade all the time. Motivate your employees to do the same and develop their skills through:

• In-person training programs and online courses
• “Lunch-and-learn” sessions
• In-house and off-site workshops

Send your employees news articles about the dental industry to keep them engaged. Encouraging dental professionals to play a more active role will instill more confidence in them.

Enhancing Patient Experience Through Training

One of your dental team’s top goals is to draw more patients to your practice and retain them. Training can help your staff enhance the patient experience while providing top-notch patient care.

Customer Service Excellence

Your team should strive to leave a positive impression every time a patient contacts your practice. Train your staff to be more helpful during phone and in-office interactions with patients.

Utilize technology like Weave’s texting and phone system features for dental offices to extend the best customer service to patients. By managing patient inquiries and appointment requests efficiently, you can build better patient relationships.

Task Automation and Efficiency

Repetitive tasks can take a toll on your dental team and make them less efficient. Rely on automation to make your employees more productive and satisfied with their jobs.

You can train your team to use technology to automatically handle billing, reminders, and appointment confirmations. Weave’s automated appointment reminder and insurance verification tools are excellent examples.

Creating a Positive Team Culture

In recent years, only about half of American workers have reported being satisfied with their jobs. Many people aren’t happy with their professional lives because of the workplace cultures they face. To make your employees happier, create a positive team dynamic within your practice.

Recognition and Feedback

Schedule regular feedback sessions and performance reviews with your dental practice’s employees. By doing this, you can:

• Recognize their achievements
• Provide them with constructive criticism
• Talk to them about their goals
• Make them feel more valued
• Create a sense of accountability

You can also implement Weave’s internal chat feature into your practice’s operations to deliver more daily feedback to employees.

Begin Building a Dream Team for Your Dental Practice by Offering the Right Training

Structured dental team training helps you, your employees, and your practice grow like never before. This training can simultaneously improve communication, patient satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

By investing in effective training, like in-person seminars and online courses, you can enjoy better team performance and steadily increase your bottom line. Weave’s tools can help you and your office managers make the most of your practice’s training efforts.

Get a demo today to see how Weave can help unify your team and streamline operations.