Interview With a Resident

Hi, I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin and welcome to this Monday Morning Minute. We just got back from Utah. What a great experience we had. Dr. Gordon Christensen out there, dr. Robert Miller out there speaking and talking about the advantages of mini dental implants, plus a whole bunch of other lectures at our International Academy of mini dental implants meeting. It was great to see everybody that we haven’t seen in so many months because because of this COVID nonsense going on around the world. And we just had a wonderful experience. We had 75 doctors come out to park city, deer Valley, Utah, at the beautiful Stein Erickson Lodge. We’re going to go back there again. That was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. What do you think, Fitz? Was it great? 100%. One of the nicest places I’ve ever been.

Fitz is here in the audience, so I just thought I’d ask him. So anyway, we came back here. We were working hard all week, and then I watched the Buffalo Bills lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, and I was so frustrated. But I went home, and I was just starting to reminisce about the past several months and what’s been going on in dentistry and our practice. Of course, dental offices reopened June 1 here in New York State, and we were fortunate that we were able to start our residency program, our advanced education and general dentistry program, July 1. And one of our residents is here with me today. Al McQuarrie is here with me. Say hello, Al.

What’s going on, guys? Nice to meet you. 10,000 people watching this. 10,000. Oh, man. Pressure is on. Pressure is on. But I started thinking about what Al and our other residents have accomplished in such a short period of time in just three months. Al, how many mini implants have you placed?

I think last week, I hit 100. In just over three months being here, I hit over 100. 100 mini dental implants for a resident who’s just out of dental school. What dental school did he go to? I went to Tufts University over in Boston with your son, actually.

In fact, you’re a good friend of Jared’s, and you were kind of a mentor to him as he was going through his first couple of years because you were one of the upper classmen. Yeah, he was a great kid. I love helping him out, and he helped me out. He exposed me to you, and basically, he’s the reason why I’m here today.

Did you take my lecture when I was in? I did last November, actually. You invited me, you and Jared. I came out here, and I took a lecture with you, and I was exposed to mini dental implants. I watched your live surgery, and it was like a dream come true. I saw my future, and I just had to be here. I had to learn from you. And we’re so glad that you applied to the program and that you were able to come here to Buffalo. And I know your home is in New Hampshire and you spend a lot of time in Massachusetts, but what do you think about western New York?

I love it. I couldn’t be happier out here. That’s excellent. Well, we’re really happy to have you. I wrote down a few questions to ask you, just because I knew I wouldn’t remember all of these. So, first of all, here at Shatkin Dental Health, which is our residency program, what is a normal what does the normal day look like for you?

So basically, we show up 07:30 A.m., get prep for the day, we talk about patients, we talk about treatment plans, we go over any problems that we had the day before, we talk about future patients that we’re working on. Basically, it’s our time to huddle in the morning and get ready for the day.

Awesome. And then during the actual day so give me a typical day. What type of patients are you seeing? What are you doing in a day? I know you said you’ve done over 100 mini implants. What about other work that you’ve accomplished?

So it’s really like I said, it’s an advanced education in general dentistry. So basically, anything on a treatment plan I can sink my teeth into? That goes for ending the patient’s teeth, yeah. Both yeah. Nice. No pun intended. So anything from endo, crown and Bridge dentures? Anything? Basically, even a little bit of orange.

How many teeth have been extracted, would you say? Probably close to 200. I haven’t 100 mini implants. What about crown and bridge? How many crowns? I’ve done some wisdom teeth extractions with you. That was one of the best experiences. They’re difficult and packed with teeth, but, yeah, that was a great idea.

What about crown and bridge? Do you have any idea how many crowns you’ve done? Probably within 60 or 70, I would say. So quite a bit more than you did in your dental school. Yeah, just a few more. I probably graduated with under 20 crowns finished and only a couple of bridges, so it’s been nothing short of a dream come true coming out here.

So what gives you so much confidence to place these mini implants? And would you suggest that a general dentist who’s out there getting started with mini implants, what do you suggest to them to get started doing these things?

First of all, it starts with having confidence and being confident in your abilities and knowing the anatomy. If you know those things and you have proper treatment planning and case selection, there’s really nothing that you can’t do. The sky is the limit.

I 100% agree with you. And we sell these doctors a starter kit at our courses, and sometimes it takes them a year, and they’ve only placed two or three or four or ten implants. They really got to take the ball and run with it.

Absolutely. Yeah. You got a hand off. You got to hit the hole, I guess. But no, I mean, everybody has their own pace, and I have a lot of guidance with you and Dr. Powers. Right. So I have a lot of confidence now, but things have changed so much. There’s almost nothing that sits down in my chair that I don’t feel that I can handle. Confidence.

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I’ll tell you, when we started this program, I told all of you, there’s four of you besides yourself. There’s three other residents. Oh, no. Broccoli is one of them, I should say. Ohano, Gildersleeve. But that’s Dr. Donald Broccoli’s daughter, who’s one of our residents, and Donald is one of our many implant centers down in Butler, Pennsylvania. We just saw him out in Utah as well. She’s got tremendous confidence. She grew up with it. She learned it. But the other two residents as well, Thomas and Carmen, are really feeling very comfortable. And I told you all when he started, come and get me if you have any problem, but you rarely come to get me because you have such confidence to go through the whole process and finish it on your own. It’s really amazing.

Yeah. No, I agree. We also help each other, and we have our own strengths and weaknesses. We know our limitations. But this year is all about expanding those limitations and really being able to get to the next level in practicing dentistry. Well, that’s great.

So would you say the other residents here at Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® Are also placing a lot of mini implants? Yeah, absolutely. I think Carmen has placed over 80 Ahono has placed over 80 or so. And Thomas, I think, has the most he has well over 100. Wow. That’s fantastic. So, Al, what are your future plans in dentistry? So, ten year plan. I would like to have my own implant center, but who knows? Maybe I’ll stay here in Buffalo and stay at aesthetic associate center.

I sure hope you do. I know I offered you a job the other day. You haven’t gotten back to me yet, but maybe on the next Monday morning minute, we can make a big announcement. Yeah, well, I can tell you, it’s pretty hard for me to say no to you. Okay.

You’re the man. All right, well, anyway, I’m really glad to have Al here with us and also our other residents. And I want all you dentists out there to know that if you have children out there in dental school, they can apply to our residency program here at Shatkin Dental health through the NYU Langone program. And you can do that right at NYU Langone’s website, and then you do it through the match program. Of course, you got to go through the match with the with adsas, but we would love to see your sons and daughters apply to our program here we have actually very competitive program. We have over 60 applicants for next year. We’re going to take four new students next year for the residency program, but we’re very excited about it. But more than that, we’re excited that the next generation of dentists are excited about placing mini implants. And we want you to be just as excited. So if you’re a young dentist or an old dentist and just getting started with mini implants, don’t be bashful, don’t be scared. Go for it. Do it. You’re going to have tremendous results.

You’re going to change patients lives every day. And I’m going to be here to help you. So is Dr. Powers. All of the dentists who are with us with the Mini Dental Implant Centers of America, and our lecturers like Matt Lasorsa and Andrea Smith and a whole host of others, Randy Staples, we’re all going to be there to hold your hands and help you along the way. So if you’ve got a kit in a drawer, pull it out and start using it because this is the time to be successful with mini dental implants. And don’t forget about the mono dental implants that we have now, because those are a small diameter mono implant, but they’re considered conventional diameters for insurance billing because they’re greater than 3 mm. They have the abutment on there and they are a great implant. I’ve been loving these mono implants. So between the minis and the monos, you can’t go wrong and keep going and keep working hard and stay healthy and safe and keep your loved ones healthy and safe until this pandemic is over. I’m signing out now. I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin and I’ll see you on the next Monday morning minute.