He has good hands. That dentist. Work is beautiful.
The term good hands is something of a distraction because it implies that at the end of your arms, you have either good hands, or not.
Like you are either born with talented hands that can do amazing work, or you can't.
That crown prep is beautiful because he had good hands. That RCT was so well managed because she had good hands.
It's nonsense of course.
Very little of your skill in dentistry comes from an innate form of hand eye coordination.
Most of whether you produce good dentistry comes down to self discipline, endurance and the environment you work in. Now before you jump on a bandwagon of excuses and explain how your environment does not allow you to achieve what you would like (my patients are too poor, my work place puts too much pressure on me) part of self discipline is working to create an environment that allows you to do well, or not choosing to work in one that doesn't.
Nice work comes because a dentist looks at their first attempt, and says, no it's not good enough. And then they take a little longer to get it right, perhaps running late. Not wanting to always run late, they book a little longer to do the procedure next time. Discipline.
Nice work comes from endurance. When you look at your crown prep, and it's not right, but you are a bit tired and just want to move on. But instead you continue to refine it until it's right.
Nice work comes from taking time to train your staff to support you properly.
Nice work comes from taking extra time occasionally to practice a procedure without time constraint.
The more I teach, the more I realise dentistry is not in your hands. It's in your head.
What do you think? Are natural hand eye coordination that important after doing dentistry for ten or fifteen years?
