Are you wondering about starting a wellness program in your dental office? We will share how we started the wellness program in dentistry at our offices. In this article, we share how we started our wellness program at Nebraska Family Dentistry.
Wellness is about everything, and not just about working out or eating well. Doing those things are important, but are not enough to stay well. Wellness in a dental office extends to how the schedule is designed, working relationships between teams, and even the sense of appreciation or purpose among team members.
Dentistry as a career has many daily challenges and the same challenges can present at a single or multi-provider office. The single most valuable asset in any dental practice is the dentist and the dental team. Wellness and work-life balance are essential to the maintenance of each person, on every team. Without this team, the dental practice would cease to exist!
It may be the very same set of challenges for a single dentist or a group of dentists looking to start a wellness program within a dental office. In this blog, we will outline how we started the wellness program in our dental offices which in turn, has helped promote wellness at the workplace. We hope that this will inspire you to start yours.
Before starting our wellness program in dentistry, we created two simple mission goals to shape our culture.
Nebraska Family Dentistry mission goals:
#1. To become the friendliest dental office in town.
#2. To have a great place for our team members to work.
Wellness program in dentistry and mission goals, how are they connected?
We believe that defining mission goals is an essential part of building any culture. Starting a wellness program in dentistry was and is, a crucial part of helping Nebraska Family Dentistry accomplish missions goals for both our patients and our teams.
We believe that promoting wellness creates an environment where team members enjoy working, while providing an awesome experience for patient care. Our wellness program created in 2018, is targeted towards keeping our patients and our team members healthier, happier and hopefully helping them to live longer & better lives.
Wellness program in dentistry and our patients
We recognize that for patients, the dental office is usually not their favorite place to be. When patients come to our offices, we want to give them top-notch clinical care, while helping them feel at ease during their appointments.
We provide many amenities as well as sedation dentistry for patients to help them have an excellent experience. By creating positive experiences during dental appointments, we hope to help patients reach optimal dental health, leading to an improvement in their overall health and well-being.
We also educate patients and provide tips on how to live healthier lives. We believe that by promoting a healthier lifestyle, we can help patients prevent dental diseases.
Watch our presentation and tips we give to patients:
Living Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle and to Have Optimal Dental Health
Learn how we cater to Dental Office Infection Control
Wellness program in dentistry and weekly health tips for our teams and patients.
Every week, we share wellness tips with our teams and patients.
Check out just a few and for more tips follow us on:
Wellness program in dentistry and wellness-oriented blogs
While it is important to have information about preventing cavities and treating periodontal disease among many other dental topics, our wellness oriented writers compose blogs connecting dental health to overall health. Check out the article below on living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle and the importance of making lifestyle changes. Incorporating these changes into your daily routine, can help put periodontal disease into remission or prevent it altogether.
Check out: Living Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle
Wellness program in dentistry in Lincoln, NE, our teams, and clean air by IQAir
IQAir assists people in living longer, healthier lives by providing some of the finest air quality products in the world. We are proud to offer clean air to our patients and our teams.
As a part of our wellness program and promoting wellness at the workplace, we have installed an air-filtration system to help reduce the number of harmful aerosols that are created during dental appointments. The air-filtration system helps remove excess mercury vapor that is released into the air during the removal of old amalgam fillings. In addition to this office-wide system, we have individual air-vacuum units at each of our locations. This vacuum helps to pull in more of the vapors near the patient’s face during amalgam removal. Not only does this new system reduce the risk to patients during appointments, but it helps keep our offices safer for all team members reducing the mercury vapors and bacterial aerosols during patient care hours.
We use the IQAir air filtration system. It is the world leader in air purification and provides some of the highest grade air filtration technology on the market. Our filtration is able to capture ultra-fine particles down to .003 microns and clean 90% of the particles through all applications of dentistry. This top of the line air cleaning system has high-efficiency special filters that catch harmful things such as :
- Mercury vapors/gas
- Harmful parts of disinfectants
- Volatile organic compounds used in dental materials
Wellness program in dentistry and healthy snacks for our teams
As a part of our wellness program in dentistry in Lincoln, NE and promoting wellness at the workplace, we have snacks available for our teams. We try to avoid providing snacks high in sugar and rather, focus on stocking snack shelves with protein and fiber-rich snacks, such as nuts, oranges, and whole wheat crackers.
Learn about great foods to pack when making school lunches
Wellness program in dentistry and wellness-oriented group activities
Our team at Nebraska Family Dentistry also actively promotes wellness among ourselves. Our team regularly shares wellness tips on our private Facebook group page. Weekly, each team member contributes a tip. We also do group activities that promote wellness. For example we may do group exercise classes, movie nights, and or team Lunch & Learn events. At these events we may also talk about ways in which we can improve our own wellness as well as share ideas and insight on how we can provide better care to our patients.
As a team, we choose to be warm and positive each day with one another as well as our patients. Using positive language and recognizing and appreciating one another each day with compliments on a job well done or thanking one another for helping out, keeps team morale high.
Team members give out “Recognition Cards,” which are a thank-you note for a job well done and helping above what is or may be expected. Those appreciation cards are encouraged to be shared among team members every time someone helps and or goes above and beyond. This type of recognition for team members may seem small, but it helps team members feel appreciated for their efforts. Each team member is thanked quarterly by the doctors with a gift for a job well done with the amount reflecting the number of appreciation cards that team member collected.
Our Appreciation Card as a part of our wellness program in dentistry
It is important to reward team members individually and as a team together. At our offices, we work extra hard every single day to provide exceptional dental care. It is important to have strong teams, who work well together.
Team relationships and wellness program in dentistry
Healthy team relationships are important and critical in order to achieve wellness at the work place. To encourage a healthy team approach, each team has a “Team Fun Fund” where money gets deposited for getting things done that are important for running our dental offices smoothly. We have a list of daily tasks that need to be done. At the end of the day, if those things get completed, money gets deposited to the “Team Fun Fund.”
Those daily things cannot be accomplished by just one person. It always takes a whole team, working together. The amount that gets deposited varies from $5-$10 per day. After the amount builds up, teams can spend their fun fund in any way that they desire. It can be on a group activity, lunch, or even a spa day.
Conclusion about wellness program in dentistry
At Nebraska Family Dentistry, we work very hard to create outstanding dental offices. In addition to offering many services for all of our patients, we want them to choose us for their dental care because of our phenomenal atmosphere and excellent patient care.
Creating our wellness program and promoting wellness at the workplace allows us to accomplish our mission goals and to be at our prime every day.
Dr. Brad and Dr. Kathryn Alderman
The information on this page was written by Dr. Kathryn Alderman.
This gentle Lincoln, NE dentists says: “Dental anxiety or dental phobia, affects millions of people across the United States. If you’re one of them, you should know that you aren’t alone. There’s no need to feel embarrassed, ashamed, or afraid when you’re with us. We’ve helped several patients in the past through their dental anxiety, and we’re happy to help you, too. Dr. Kathryn Alderman, dentist for dental anxiety in Lincoln, NE, has worked with thousands of patients suffering from dental anxiety in Lincoln and surrounding communities. Throughout the process, she’s helped patients overcome their fears.”
You can schedule with this Lincoln, NE dentist, or her partners, online 24/7 at a Nebraska Family Dentistry Location near you. This “dentist near me” serves the local communities close to Lincoln. Some of the communities include Waverly, Davey, Raymond, Garland, Ceresco, Greenwood, and Malcom, Roca, Bennet, Firth, Crete, Hickman, and many more!
If you have questions or would like to start a wellness program in your dental office, please email us at nebraskafamilydentistry@gmail.com
