This program is for the entire staff of general dental offices who want to successfully treat periodontal cases. Dental staves are, by necessity, superbly skilled at getting patients to passively sit in the dental chair in order to endure procedures that restore teeth. Success in periodontal therapy requires the both staff and doctor to master an entirely different set of skills that focuses on changing the patient’s out-of-the-dental-office behavior. That is why this program introduces skills and concepts unlike any normally used in dental offices; skills and concepts that enable a dental office to enjoy the same success in perio as in restorative dentistry.

Empower staff members by allowing them to learn “Hands-On-Hands Com- munication,” a patient education skill that is more powerful than words. Doctors and hygienists must attend with the staff for best results. Each doctor, hygienist, and chairside assistant should bring a perio probe to this class, where, on your own fingertips, each will learn a simple, inexpensive, accurate, and painless method of perio probing.

Since periodontal healing is a biological and behavior process, this course focuses on biologically and behaviorally sound exam procedures. The entire office team will learn to think in biological terms, like a periodontist, and to understand why good periodontal decisions do not turn on pocket depth. Dentists and staff alike will benefit from learning about probiotics, a new field of medicine, that turns dental plaque into a tool for dental health.

In the morning, discover why the methods of repair and restoration that work so well for fixing and replacing teeth, do not transfer to periodontal therapy. The biology of the periodontium forces us to adopt a new set of rules and apply new techniques and methods. While a dental exam is done to find and document what needs fixing, a perio exam is done for completely different reason; to establish a biological baseline. Participants in this course will learn how the fundamentally different “convergent” problems of dentistry and “divergent” problems of periodontics require totally different therapeutic methods and skills.

In the afternoon, learn how experts do pain-free probing. Learn the critical differences between normal dental x-rays and periodontal x-rays. Learn the irresistible “Hands-On-Hands” perio education technique. Learn how the assistant’s role is as important as the doctor’s role in the overall success of periodontal cases and why they must work together as an educational-therapeutic team to achieve consistent success.

OUTLINE FOR MORNING SESSION:
Perspective, History & Research; Biological Process vs. Repair Procedure; Probiotics: a new science; Perio Exam as a Baseline; Better than Pocket Depths

OUTLINE FOR AFTERNOON SESSION:
Pain-free Probing; Radiographs in Perio; Exam as Education; Hands-On-Hands Communication; Sample Forms to Manage Data

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