Dental Office Professional Development
Dental Office Professional DevelopmentThere are many avenues for development available to dental professionals. Continuing education courses, local or national conferences, or even going back to school for a college or graduate degree can provide significant personal growth and value to a practice. However, these development tools also might not fit into a busy schedule or office budget. This does not mean that you should ignore a worthwhile development process. Below are four excellent sites that dental office professionals can use for on-demand and valuable professional development at your convenience.
Front Office Rocks
Front Office Rocks is a training resource developed for dentists who need specialized training for their team on all aspects of the front desk. They offer free videos on:
- Handling Late Patients
- How to Offer an Appointment
- Asking the Patient to Pay
- Benefit Breakdown Form
- First Week on the Job
A comprehensive library of videos is available to subscribers and Front Office Rocks also hosts Live Events as one day programs to get your office the training it needs to help reach the ultimate in customer service status. UIC Dental highly recommends a live event for any practice looking to turn their front office staff into customer service rock stars.
Lifehacker U
Schools like Yale University, MIT, Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, and many more are all offering free online classes that you can audit and the website Lifehacker has compiled a listing of some popular classes which provides an in depth look and many different online classes.
Some potentially interesting topics for dental offices:
- Branding, Content & Social Media
- Corporate Finance for Healthcare Administrators
- Understanding Clinical Studies: Behind the Statistics
- Finance for Non-Financial Professionals
Higher learning has never been so affordable and convenient.
Audible.com
An audiobook as professional development might sound weird, but what better way to spend your daily commute than listening and learning? Audible is not free, but there is a great trial offer that offers a three month subscription at a discounted rate of $9 which includes three free audiobooks. For example, you could grab the following titles about dentistry, marketing, and self-improvement for just $9:
Becoming Remarkable: Creating a Dental Practice Everyone Talks About
Written by: Fred Joyal
List Building Basics: How to Generate Unstoppable Targeted Subscribers in Any Market
Written by: Anthony Ekanem
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Written by: Charles Duhigg
These audiobooks not meeting your needs? There are thousands to choose from.
Lynda.com
Lynda.com lets you “learn new business, creative, & tech skills with expert-led online video tutorials– anytime, anywhere.” UIC Dental uses Lynda.com and the videos are informative, interesting, and cover a broad range of topics.
For example, SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) are big topics of conversation in the dental community and Lynda has courses such as Google AdWords Essential Training, Online Marketing Fundamentals, SEO Fundamentals.
Marketing not your thing? There are courses on Google Calendar, Microsoft Office, Communicating with your team, or even Word-of-mouth marketing.
New users get a ten-day free trial, but there is also a better way. Many public libraries offer Lynda for free to library patrons. For example, locally in Kentucky, both the Louisville Free Public Library and Lexington Public library offer Lynda.com to its cardholders. Check your local library website to see if Lynda.com or similar sites are available to you.