Task saturation
Have you ever been overwhelmed at work? It can cause you to make bad decisions.
One of my favourite YouTube channels is Mentor Pilot. Even though I fly a lot, I find it fascinating to hear about disasters and near disasters in the air.
One common feature of many air disasters is that initially one or two things happened unexpectedly. This leads to the pilots having to concentrate and work harder.
Under the increased workload the pilots gradually become overwhelmed. In turn this causes them to make errors that cause further unwanted events. This becomes a downward spiral. Finally there comes the disaster.
Being overwhelmed
Of course, in a quiet peaceful environment the pilots are competent. What pushed them over the edge into making errors is being overwhelmed.
This reminds me of what can happen in the dental environment.
When everything is running well dentistry is easy. The patient is on time, the equipment is working flawlessly, the staff has everything ready, there are no interruptions and the patient is easy to work on.
But, when things start to go wrong, especially if multiple things go wrong, it’s possible to become overwhelmed and then dentistry becomes exponentially harder.
Mistakes get made. Details get missed. Patients experience adverse treatment outcomes.
What to do?
Every dentist should strive to make their work environment as stress-free and calm as possible if they want to do their best work.
For example:
I could not be interrupted during a procedure unless the building was on fire.
Except for rare emergencies I always ran on time.
Every task that it was possible to delegate, was delegated so that I could focus 100% on the patient.
Staffing levels were high so everything was ready as needed. I never had to wait on anything.
What do you do in your office to keep your stress levels under control?
It’s an important thing to think about if you want to minimise errors and do your best work.
