On a Friday at the start of November, I travelled to Edinburgh to work all day, speaking to a group of independent dentists at the Tynecastle Hotel, the home of the Heart of Midlothian football club (It was very nice). 

Speaking to a group all day in intimate circumstances like this is quite tiring and quite exhausting as you get into all sorts of conversations with the group, which you don't expect. 

It's not good enough to stand in front of a group like that and speak at them all day, so the interactions are essential.

In one of the breakout parts of the day, when we were just talking as a group about things that were going on, one of the dentists asked me if I was going to cover technology in case note collection for dentists as part of the lecture on dental business that I was providing.

I had not intended to do that (although I have a lot of material in that area). Still, in further discussion, the clinician had told me that they were spending more than two hours per night after they had returned home from work to complete case notes for patients for the day before starting again the next day.

It may be difficult for patients who don't work in healthcare to understand how bad the burden of case note recording has become on healthcare professionals throughout the country, which is similar to the burdens experienced by teachers in the work that they do too (My daughter has just become a science teacher). 

It's not unusual for clinicians to be doing hours' worth of notes at home with their regular working hours and effectively unpaid.

My wife is a Macmillan nurse for Children, and this is a huge part of what she does for her work.

The reason we do this and find ourselves having to do this now is the fear of the risk of legal action or action from a regulator following patient complaints, and therefore, we mistakenly feel that we will be protected if we write more and more and more, notes (The opposite is often true because the notes are generally used against us), but this is beside the point.

The point is that at The Campbell Clinic, we have invested heavily in both staff and technology to reduce the burden of case notes and to help us have less burden on administration at the practice for the clinician.

The benefit of this? 

More time to talk to patients.

Not only do we have more time to talk to patients, but we also have more time to see patients because if we are able to keep on top of our admin and not have to do two hours of admin each night, then there is more time in our lives to do other things, including seeing more patients or talking to patients for longer.

This is an example of the title of this piece using technology to make us more human, and it is a fundamental principle in the future development of The Campbell Clinic.

Already today in my work (It's a Sunday, but I'm doing some work at home). 

I've been using various versions of AI to help me with various pieces of work but using artificial intelligence adjuncts at the practice for many different things.

We also have sophisticated electronic technological systems to allow us to collect material from patients before they arrive to remind them of appointments, to maintain our finance system, to maintain our appointment system, to maintain our telephone, and many, many other things.

For us, though, as a business and an organisation, this is never to allow us to reduce the number of staff working. 

It is suggested in parts of dentistry that we should move away from a reception desk model and have a sophisticated iPad in front of the front door. That way, we would not need anyone in reception and could save many salaries of receptionists who would be present.

Patients would just walk through the door tap to say that they were there, and the dentist could come out of the room to collect them as they wished.

This all sounds great, doesn't it?

However, the problem is that we move away from interpersonal contact and care more and more, and healthcare is designed to provide care.

In the chase for effectiveness and efficiency, everybody wants to replace mundane, repetitive tasks with technology, and we believe that this is probably the right thing to do.

Sending recalls to patients, sending group emails, or asking people to fill out a medical history form online before they attend is a really good idea because it gives the patients more time when they attend the practice.

But using the resources saved to remove humans from the practice would make us into a very sterile place indeed. 

I was recently chatting to someone who is very high up in the dental industry, and they were excited that there were no 13 practices in the south of England which have no reception desk and no reception team and that are entirely manned by an iPad on reception.

The business has a central call centre, so when patients phone for appointments, it's cheaper and easier to do this at a central call centre instead of having multiple reception desks in 13 clinics.

This is not the direction of travel for The Campbell Clinic.

We have recently launched a general dental service that we intend to grow over the next 2 to 3 years, and the basis for this is a service that provides more time, discussion, care, attention, and empathy for patients.

I have learned the value of this personally myself after an illness I had two years ago, which led me to seek out the help of a private endocrinologist whom I've written about in these pages before. 

Dr Hisham Maksoud is a genius. The most wonderful of men who looks after patients with thyroid problems (my own), diabetes and menopausal issues together with PCOS.

The last time I wrote about him here and explained how human he was and how wonderful he was, many patients contacted me for his details, and I introduced him to many people who needed help.

The wonderful thing about him is the time he spends with you as a patient. He doesn't replace everything with technology (invoices are sent by email); he sits with you and talks to you; he finds out about you, what is important for you, and how best to deal with that.

That is the vision and the wish of everyone here at The Campbell Clinic; that is our vision for our new General Dental service, that is the vision for our orthodontic (braces) service, that is the vision for the whole of the organisation. 

Together with General Dental services, orthodontics is also an interesting example of this in a world where technology has become heavily involved in orthodontics. 

Everyone else is running to a situation where the dentist sees the patient less and less, and technology increasingly exists. It means that patients don't have to see the dentist very often, but I'm not sure I see that as being, in any way, a good thing.

For what it's worth, I promise that for as long as I am in charge of the clinic here, we will use cutting-edge technology in the best possible way to the greatest advantage for our patients and our team, but we will never use technology to replace the face to face contact, which is so fundamental and critical in quality empathic healthcare.
 

After my last writing in October and talking about our superhero day, we had the most extraordinary day looking after some young ones who attended with the most brilliant costumes! 

We met some people who'd never been to the dentist before, and hopefully, we inspired them to look after their health and oral health for life.

We had the best time with some wonderful little ones.

If this interests you, we'll be doing it again soon, probably in the February half-term.

We'll have the superhero drop-in day for your kids or your grandkids.

We don't really mind who dresses up as a superhero, whether it's Granny or Grandad or Mum and Dad and the kids, too. We were all dressed up.

Come and see us if you want. Get in touch here and we'll let you know when it's happening.

The final heads up is that we are hosting The Campbell Clinic Charity Ball later this month after we run our Learning from Failure Conference (Eddie the Eagle will be there, and we're really excited). 

The ball is full, and we're hoping to raise the most money we've ever raised at a charity ball.

I'll keep you updated when I report back in December.

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