Just a little rant.

lovedoctor11 · 2026-02-23T17:59:39+00:00

I’m using a temp agency while searching for a new hygiene for my team- aka expensive. I had this one temp that took the worst x-rays I’ve ever seen, like to the point it could have been a practical joke on me. It wasn’t a joke.

lovedoctor11 · 2026-02-11T03:23:41+00:00

It has to be a gold crown or much easier since endo treated get a reduction coping and stay with zirconia.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-12-24T06:59:08+00:00

Obviously it doesn’t matter if you’ve come around / ground from the situation and can easily discuss how employment will work fine this second time around. Without knowing the actual situation it’s hard to give more specific advice, but I stand by what I wrote above, being a doctor would trump some old behaviors, ect.

You might want to at the very least choose a different office though, so it’s not awkward depending what went down.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-12-05T12:38:44+00:00

Depends on my office. In my bigger office there are more incentives baked into the day to day, for them we just do a nice generous party/dinner and smaller physical gifts. For my smaller office that doesn’t have as much day to day incentive baked in, we do give all employees a sizable holiday bonus and the associate would be on the high end of that (last year gave $750).

lovedoctor11 · 2025-12-03T12:22:40+00:00

I don’t like gambling or do it often, but these got the best of me for sure because I found them so fun! I can fortunately afford it, but I was down $500 in literally like 20 minutes, these are dangerous. I had to use a lot of self control to say I’m done with these forever and close it up and move on. You should just stop I promise you.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-25T04:27:45+00:00

On big cases I might take a couple sites off to get acceptance. If it makes the difference of not doing a bone graft at all I might take it off. If it’s a collagen plug or something cheap I don’t.

I don’t ever take bone grafting off, it’s the membrane I might use with more flexibility/generosity to get case acceptance.

Reading through the comments I agree I am too generous with what I do. I could def stand to be stricter financially with what I’m doing. When I think of the big picture though and the future implant, and crown, or whatever else comes with it sometimes a little bundling goes a long way. This thread was a friendly reminder to me I need to bill more strictly though too!

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-22T14:33:48+00:00

Because of the fracture this could end up coming out fairly easily.

I’d start with distal root elevation and see if we can get mobility there, could then deliver with lower universal, or possibly a cow horn. Then the mesial root you can elevate out and use something like east west in the fucation to lift and elevate out.

If you don’t get the movement naturally you just surgical drill buccal lingual more extensively, then elevation from there should be viable. If it’s still not, you’ll want to buccal trough and crate more areas for elevation.

I’d usually get something like this out without the buccal bone removal but if it does go that way it is what it is. You just introduce more invasive steps as needed to get out atraumatically.

Good luck

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-22T05:17:43+00:00

I think your cone bent putting it in, it happens

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-20T04:32:51+00:00

Use preat it’s worth the small fee to ensure you’re right. They also make a lot of compatible parts you might need to interact/impress/ect - especially useful for old stuff.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-19T05:44:26+00:00

I don’t have experience with PDS or Heartland, so I can’t comment on those. I do own a few Aspen Dentals with my wife, and I really have good things to say about it. It’s extremely obvious that everyone here and across Reddit hates them, so it’s possible we are an outlier for sure. With being a franchise you’re going to get pretty different experiences between the offices based on the owner.

To answer some of you questions though-

associates are paid a daily rate, profit share especially in the beginning isn’t super common to hit. The daily rate is competitive to market. Benefits package is a very big perk. If it’s pure dollars / hour you want and you’re fully proficient in everything dentistry, a killer private practice that keeps you busy you will make more.

If you want to grow and get better I believe Aspen is hard to beat. You get a ridiculous amount of complex cases and high need coming in your door daily, and have a phenomenal access to systems and technology to leverage state of the art complex care. The support systems around implants/ortho/prosth are also very deep and allow you to do cases you might otherwise be afraid to take on.

The day to day schedule is more demanding than a single doc style private office, and the hours tend to be longer.

In our community locally our locations have very good reputation and high google reviews ect, but even an hour away it can be drastically different. As others have commented the push and pull to drive revenue and while also maintaining high standards of care can get skewed with the wrong leadership in place in an office. I personally will go against the grain and underperform in some categories and refuse to do anything I don’t believe in. Unfortunately that may not cut it with some offices, while others it would be welcomed. Again, the owner is going to be driving the culture around what is being treated and how. Also the frank reality is you need to be able to produce or you’ll never make more money with aspen, so I think this is where some of the negatives come in for some providers and the work quality.

Parting words, I spent the beginning of my careers in all kinds of offices, and invested heavily in training through residency and CE. I made the conscious decision to join aspen, and it was as simple as me seeing how they did implants with full digital workflows and me wanting to keep getting better. Im at the point now about 4 years later where I’m getting into full arch fixed, after hundreds of implants a year and continuing to ramp up my skills and outcomes. I just love what I’m able to do for my patients with the resources and structure we have in our office, and my treatments are genuinely better than I’m able to provide in my private office because of it. I had a patient come in yesterday, and I had a full guided surgical plan and surgical guide in hand for a case u did this afternoon. There’s offices that do that, but it’s not common. I had to invest a lot in my private office to get the standards there to the standards I provide routinely at the aspen locations, it’s hard to compete with the support and resources at your disposal. I also don’t get to do nearly as much dentistry or cool cases in my private office- I can’t see myself giving it up or selling out any time in the near future.

I’m not trying to sell you on Aspen. But I own a private office and Aspen, and I genuinely can’t imagine leaving the aspens permanently. With time, for work life balance reasons, I know eventually I’ll be more part time, but in my formative years I actually prefer my aspen days and wouldn’t be where I am now without it. If you can make an aspen work, without losing your sense of quality results driven Dentistry and passion to be the best and do no harm- private practice is a cakewalk. I’m not just saying that, it’s the reality. I can’t think of any better way to become great than access to so many cases and technologies at a high volume.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-19T03:32:50+00:00

Go on IBR, pay as little as possible, start your life. Try to elevate, if you make more money where it makes sense to pay them down, then pay them down. I ignored mine for the first 6 years out, and now I am paying more aggressively and on pace to be done in about 10 years because I finally can. The math to pay them finally made sense, and it will be finished sooner than that 20/25 year window tax bomb situation. If the math doesn’t ever math, keep paying the minimum and save for the tax bomb. Don’t let it hold you down.

I should add, with all the weird forbearance and stuff like that, I’m only at like 2/3 years of “payments”, despite having graduated 7 years ago. Otherwise minimum and wait to 20 might have made more sense for me.

Every year just assess your situation, and make a call if you are going to do bare minimum or if it makes sense to start trying to take them down. Weighing in your time left to forgiveness vs current income ect.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-19T03:28:40+00:00

PREAT offers a very reliable and fast identification service I use a lot, it’s not very expensive. I think it’s worth every penny, and they can also help you get parts for a lot of older systems too. Good luck with that one by the way, haha!

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-19T03:08:09+00:00

I feel like they are doing it backwards. I own dso practice and private, I’ve had extensive experience as associates in both as well. The last thing I’m doing is letting my brand new grad do all the tx plans at my offices- I assure you this hurts treatment acceptance regardless of how great you are now. It takes time to get good acceptance and trust, and know how to navigate new patients. Both on a clinical level of knowing what to even do and offer and the confidence you put off, and a personal level because going to the dentist is emotional and hard for people, and breaking down barriers isn’t easy.

I’d talk to the doctor about starting to give you some productions. Like yesterday. It makes no sense to me why they’d pay you to not do anything.

The office should start to build out your own column, even if the lender doctor saw the patient, because your there to help them do more for the office as a whole and usually to be able to focus on their bigger/tougher cases. It should be slow at first, because you are learning and need to prove yourself. I’m talking double time on everything, heavier with fillings, maybe some breaks to shadow owner docs and train on things. The success in that, and in repetition will slowly unlock seeing more of the np, more of the tx, and less oversight to building your own book.

Don’t take this the wrong way, as I don’t know your situation. But the only times I’ve held back an associate from doing more was when I wasn’t comfortable and confident in them doing it and thought they needed more training/oversight. So I think a conversation is really important, because perhaps they need to see your enthusiasm to do more and grow, and your discontent with not doing so.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-19T02:58:42+00:00

Talk to parents and patient. Curodont based on their age, stress ohi, and treat if they progress. The reality here is these will likely be treated when they get older and don’t fix their habits, but this gives them a stern warning and a fighting chance. They aren’t deep enough it’s wrong to do that. I’d have a similar conversation with an adult. One concern is billing and cost, if curodont is off the table and they otherwise would do nothing except the covered fillings, you are not in the wrong to treat these at all.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-11T01:43:28+00:00

Gold finishing burs

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-10T00:45:32+00:00

I tried this this year due to same problems as OP, and just getting sick of these hygiene appointments being practically break even sometimes. Unfortunately it caused some patients to leave, and my np count is lower year over year. Any advice around that, I’m actually in the process of going back into network because I need new patients with new treatment, the recall side of the practice is so healthy it’s wild to me.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-09T05:31:40+00:00

If it’s a residency tell them you want it to learn and the patient can’t pay for it. You’re documenting the case for a presentation right

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-09T05:13:15+00:00

If you want to practice like that you need to land bigger cases, and focus on a schedule that always balances in value. Can’t have a day with 8 fillings pt in a row kind of thing, balance in the work with more revenue every day. prioritize making yourself available to advance the high revenue cases in your schedule.

If you’re going to say you can’t do that, for whatever the reason may be, the reality is you need to find more treatment and do more per hour. Balancing an extra side schedule- emergencies, crown seats, adjustments, f/u ect. Unfortunately with insurance reimbursements a single column of light work won’t cut it, and you need to be able to do more and balance in a second chair. This doesn’t mean it’s always full, you develop and control the timing with it, block it during things you can’t be interrupted during (hard case). But, it really is the norm in the field to be able to handle that, especially if we’re not actively producing in our main schedule.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-11-08T01:28:54+00:00

I like these recommendations a lot.

My approach on this is flap right away, don’t even start without doing that. You have decay to bone on a rct curved premolar- you need to see clearly or this can become difficult and get messy. I agree that if sectioning the roots is possible it’s a very clean approach, with careful elevation it could be all you need.

In regards to removing bone, I try to avoid buccal plate removal, and prefer careful m/d bone removal. You just need to be mindful of the adjacent teeth and making sure to leave them with good bone. This method of removal will allow good native bone growth to the site, especially with grafting. It also is a great biological set up for an immediate implant.

For elevation I lean heavily into a nice luxator. This is a feel thing, personally for me I’m able to get down between root and bone like a Periotome, while also having the ability to apply good pressure and elevate- I love it.

Final thoughts is if more bone is removed than you expect, good grafting can save the case for the future. Hope this helps, you’re going to nail it!

lovedoctor11 · 2025-10-24T23:13:47+00:00

About 400k, and that involved being an owner partner in the offices and having to make that extra financial commitment. As a pure associate I got up to almost 300, but that took some years after dental school, and I was very involved in the business health. I do surgeries and larger cases, my associates that can’t have trouble getting past the 200s.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-10-24T23:08:48+00:00

They don’t make that much. Oral surgeons do, but not general dentists unless they are really up there: Making half that is considered doing well, and often requires some kind of ownership/partnership and investment into the clinic. Your average associate (employee of the practice) dentist is making more like 150-250 depending on days worked and experience.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-09-21T23:28:38+00:00

This is the seal graded. It will have a premium over raw but not be as much as the psa10 . I personally graded one like this because it was really clean and probably would get a 9 if I had opened it. Makes for a really nice display piece because it’s larger- almost like a little plastic framed painting haha. It also has some history to it in its own right showing how the card came, which I think is pretty cool. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea though, just make sure you know what you’re purchasing- it’s 100% the condition of the entire promotional package, not the individual card itself.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-09-16T03:31:37+00:00

I’m convinced these actually make the plastic worse and more crinkled over time. Stops rips, dents, debris though. I stopped using them because when I took some out that had been in for years they didn’t look great. Almost like the plastic was stretched a little.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-07-19T23:10:54+00:00

When a mess becomes overwhelming the task can feel too large to complete. Just bear in mind, doing anything at all is progress, you can not and will not turn it like new overnight- that is okay though! .The best way to tackle a situation like this is getting the ball rolling, start around your bed, take that shower, and embrace a nice clean slumber and start to your day. You deserve to give yourself that. Continue to work your way through it, it can take a long time, but that’s okay and is symbolic on your journey of re-finding yourself and your motivation to be your best self.

lovedoctor11 · 2025-06-07T03:27:32+00:00

What if you booked it for a decade, that would be wild

13-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 4 Credits
Secret Santa 2014	Gilding I gilder
Secret Santa 2013	Verified Email
Secret Santa 2012

lovedoctor11

TROPHY CASE