Practice What You Preach

As many of you know, we have recently started screening our patients for sleep disordered breathing. The American Dental Association now states that ALL dentists should be screening for this potentially fatal condition. I’ve become passionate (ok, maybe a little obsessed) with all things sleep. I’m reading about sleep, listening to podcasts about sleep, and going to continuing education courses about it. I simply can’t get enough!! The opportunity to help people on a different level and see their lives change is incredible.

I’m going to be honest. After completing initial training, I went back to my practice and didn’t know exactly where to start! I was excited, but I was already thinking of reasons why it might not work for me or my practice. There were a million hurdles. Medical insurance, home sleep tests, communicating with physicians, patient skepticism. The list of excuses grew and grew.

The one thing I was sure of was how important it was to test my team and their spouses. 8 oral sleep appliances later, I not only learned about every single step of the process, but I gained so much confidence in the area of dental sleep medicine. I was seeing employees come to work feeling less tired. I was hearing stories of husbands who had snored for years suddenly sleeping silently. Happy wife, happy life, right? And most importantly, I was SURE that all the time and effort put into implementing this into the practice was worth it!

For those of you who have been encouraged to be screened, have already been screened, or think you may need to be screened, let us help you! The first step to a healthier, better rested, happier you is knowing if there is a problem. We currently offer screenings at no charge, so stop making excuses! Let my annoying obsession rub off on you a bit. You won’t regret it!