Shirley Gutkowski, RDH, BSDH is a career dental hygienist and champion of Minimally Invasive dental hygiene. Her outlook is years ahead of the leading edge and has proven staying power. From A1c to JVA to xylitol Gutkowski is dragging dentistry into the 21st century. MI isn’t about smaller holes; it’s about early diagnostics and intervening at the earliest stages. She is an award-winning author, popular speaker, radio host of Cross Link Radio on BlogTalkRadio, and CareerFusion coach. Shirley developed her unique perspective from the shores of Lake Testosterone where she and her husband have raised their five sons.
Video transcription:
Liz Lundry, RDH - “Hello, and welcome to the StellaLife Life Innovative Series. Have you ever had this happen to you, where you tried to implement something new in your dental practice and you just can't get it to fly? Or have you had the experience of trying to treat a patient and no matter what you and the patient do, they just don't seem to get significantly better? In the 40 plus years that I've had as a clinical hygienist, I've had these experiences and what really made the difference was getting some help and realizing that you just can't do it alone. Today we're going to hear from the amazing Robin Morrison as she discusses the need for collaboration and how we can truly get some help. We are so happy to welcome Robin Morrison.”
Robin Morrison - “Hi there. I'm Robin Morrison of RLM Healthcare Marketing and Consulting, the Dental Consultant Connection and Oral Cancer Cause. I'd like to thank StellaLife for inviting me to participate in their video series and being a part of this. So I thought about what I wanted to talk about today, and I think I would like to focus on collaboration actually, in three areas. One area is I love the collaboration that Oral Cancer Cause has with StellaLife. Anytime one of our patients needs help, needs StellaLife, they are right there to help us with their resources, with their product, with their advice. I can't tell you how many times I've called to ask questions and gotten the answers that I needed to pass on to these patients that really need the help. And to me, that is true collaboration. The patients are reaching out to us at Oral Cancer Cause and StellaLife is right by our side to help them. So that's one really big area of collaboration that I wanted to focus on today and if we can think about other areas like that, where we can serve people, I feel like that's the true sense of collaboration. The other area I'd like to share, collaboration-wise, is within my business. So in 1997, I founded RLM Healthcare Marketing and Consulting, where I provided practice management consulting and marketing to practices nationwide. I was pretty much everything to everyone. One man shows, so to speak. One woman shows, so to speak. And about ten years ago, I found a Dental Consultant Connection in which we brought in a team of over 30 specialized dental consultants and coaches. And when I say specialized, they're specialized in areas of OSHA and HIPAA, billing and coding, building perio programs within a hygiene department, the list goes on and on and on of the different specialty areas. When I started in dentistry in 97, started in dentistry in 81, actually, but started my business in 97, it was a little easier to kind of offer practice management services and pretty much be everything to everyone. But our industry has gotten a lot more sophisticated and complicated, and I don't feel like any one of us can be everything to everyone and really serve a practice well. So at that point, I collaborated with 30 plus different colleagues and consultants and coaches and built dental consultant connections. And with that, we help identify the issues that really need to be addressed within a practice and get the right consultant in there at the right time. And that is a true sense of collaboration. It's a win win. It's a win for the practice and it's a win for us dental consultants. We're able to do what we love to do and what we're good at doing, and the practices benefit from that. I think whenever there's a true sense of collaboration, there's always going to be a win. And then the other area I'd like to talk about in collaborating is with dental practices. Dental practices, dentists, have always wanted to be working hand in hand with medical physicians and the doors have not always been open for that. I feel like now the doors are open for that. I feel like this is our opportunity for dentists and physicians to collaborate for the best health and outcome for their patients. There's no time, like now, with everything we've all been through, I feel like really the doors have opened wide for this collaboration. So I would love to see dentists step out of their comfort zone, reach out to the physicians in their community. For years, dentists have wanted to work with cardiologists and endocrinologists and other specialists to help serve their patients best and also, for the physicians to reach out to the dentist to help serve their patients best. So I'd like to encourage dentists to now step out of their comfort zone, collaborate with physicians, walk into that door that I feel is wide open right now. To me, that's another win win. So collaboration equals win win, in my opinion. So that's my message that I wanted to share. So I hope everyone has a wonderful day and takes this message to heart. Thank you.”
Liz Lundry, RDH - “Thank you for all you do, Robin. On our StellaLife website, we have resources for you, places where you can take courses and also organizations that can help you with training and business growth. And if you have any patients that have cancer and are in need, we are happy to provide those patients with StellaLife products So they can get through their treatment comfortably. We're here to help. Thank you for joining us today. We'll see you next time and until then, stay safe and stay well.”