Understanding delegation

I have just moved into my new abode, and the 21 days of packed old house and five days of sleeping on the floor in the new place now seem a distant memory. Of course I am still working my way through boxes, that is a job that will probably run on for a number of weeks.

When unpacking it has been interesting to note what I wanted to find first, needless to say, the egg pan was high priority! I then had to find all the walking gear as we were heading off to the coast for a few days. It made me realise the benefit of having had good packers. Every box was labelled and as long as I could remember where they had been stored in the old house I could locate things fairly quickly. I suppose it’s a bit like practices that have every surgery set up exactly the same so that you can swap between them with minimal disruption to clinician or nurse. Most of us are creatures of habit and reach for instruments without thinking about it. Being left handed, in the days when units weren’t so flexible, you had to learn to adapt. I remember having to work hard to learn to use a slow speed right handed but then got to a point when I realised I was using the high speed right handed without even thinking. How hard do you have to think to actually write down the order you pick up what you need for each procedure?

Although for most of life this works to our advantage, it can be a hindrance when our surroundings change. By surroundings I include the people who are in it with you, not just the inanimate objects. It is also a hindrance when you want to learn new techniques or use new materials. You know you have to move forward and in some situations it will not be defensible to say you are doing and saying the same as you did 25 years ago. But it can be really hard, getting to the point of doing without thinking takes patience, practice and often failure along the way.

I think it can be easy to think this is just relevant to the clinical portion of a dentist’s role but speaking as one forced out of clinical for reasons outside my control I can assure you it also applies to non-clinical aspects of dentistry. Having to learn new skill sets, hone skills I already had and increase my knowledge in new areas I experienced (and still experience) exactly the same challenges.

I often hear people say “I tried that and it didn’t work” in respect to new ideas in the practice. The question then is, did you put in the same effort and expect the same failure, and were you prepared to work through that failure as you would have been with a clinical technique? We know the CQC are particularly keen on practices being well led. It’s not an option to not work at these non-clinical areas the same as you would to keep up your clinical skills.

Before you all shout at the page saying you weren’t trained for it, you haven’t got enough time or you just plain don’t like that side of dentistry, well then find somebody else to do it! We don’t have to be good at everything, there is a huge tendency for us to think we do. Better to accept this, delegate and make sure your practice is well led, not just to keep on the right side of the regulators but to move the business forward in line with current thinking, thus improving customer experience, minimising your chances of complaints and increasing profits.

I will try and remind myself of this as I try to delegate box emptying to a university student, it would have been very easy over the last weeks to get to a “I tried that and it didn’t work” point! Of course getting to the next stage of the contents being put anywhere other than just outside of the box is going to take a whole new level of complexity of delegation.