Ergonomics for Dentists & Hygienists | My Conversation with Stephanie Botts

Ergonomics for Dentists & Hygienists | My Conversation with Stephanie Botts

Dentistry is one of the most high-risk professions for musculoskeletal pain—and that means a huge opportunity for ergonomists. In this full interview, I sit down with Stephanie Botts, RDH, BSDH, CEAS, a practicing dental hygienist and certified ergonomics specialist, to explore how ergonomists can better understand and support the dental industry.

In this episode, we discuss:

•  ✅ The unique ergonomic challenges in dentistry (and why pain is so normalized)
•  ✅ Key risks for dentists, hygienists, and assistants—and how they compare to office/industrial ergonomics
•  ✅ High-impact, low-cost fixes that consultants can recommend with confidence
•  ✅ Why soft skills and patient management are essential for dental ergonomics
•  ✅ How ergonomists can pitch services to dental practices and highlight ROI

If you’re an ergonomist looking to expand into niche markets, this conversation gives you the knowledge and language you’ll need to connect with dental professionals and provide real value.

Resources:

Free, Downloadable Office Ergo Resources: https://www.ergonomicshelp.com/free-training

Stephanie Botts website: https://polishedposture-shop.myshopify.com/

Stephanie Botts email: stephanie@polishedposture.net

Are you a healthcare professional curious about how office ergonomics assessments could fit into your services? I’ve got you covered with some valuable (and free!) resources at www.ergonomicshelp.com/free-training.

Transcript

Darcie J's video recording: 0:00

it's like we almost have this entire culture around pain and that it's normalized and, I don't agree with that, but that's how it is. We definitely need help as a profession.

0:11

Welcome to the Business of Ergonomics podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Jeremy. I'm a board certified professional agonist with over 15 years of experience delivering ergonomics programs to employers of all different types. In this podcast, I share what other healthcare professionals are already doing and being with ergonomics assessments and how to land those clients that you dream of. Without further ado, let's jump into this episode right now. today we're diving into a niche that often gets overlooked by agonists and it's dentistry. Dentists, hygienists and assistants face some of the highest rates of musculoskeletal pain in any profession, and that means there's a tremendous opportunity for agonists to step in and make a real difference. To help us explore this space and look for opportunities. I'm joined today by Stephanie Bots. Stephanie has been a clinical dental hygienist for over 16 years. She founded Polished Posture, her ergonomic coaching business for dental professionals to assist those in the denta field with ergonomics. She understands the unique demands of practicing dentistry and is passionate about the health and wellbeing of those working in this field. Her goal is to help practitioners work safely and more comfortably while reducing the risks of early retirement and disability. In this episode, Stephanie shares insights that every ergonomics professional should know if they wanna break into the dental industry from the biggest ergonomics risks. To practical fixes and how you can communicate this to dental practitioners too.

Darcie J's video recording: 2:07

Thank you so much for being here today. Stephanie i's such a pleasure to connect with you. I saw various articles that you've written and I had to get you on this call to talk about your expertise to my audience. So welcome. Thank you so much, Darcy. It's a honor to be here. I'm excited to chat, ergonomics and dentistry with you, Our first step into. Dentistry on this podcast, and this is one of the very first actual opportunities I've had to ever talk about, dentistry with an expert in this field. Doubly welcome and I wanted to get start right at the beginning. How did you get started in dentistry and what drew you to ergonomics as a specialization? Yeah. So I'm a dental hygienist. I've been practicing for about 17 years. I don't practice as much as I would like to anymore just because of what I'm doing now with ergonomics. But I've had a lot of dental work done. I was, missing some teeth just from birth. And so I was at the dentist a lot when I was younger, and I have very fond memories of going to the dentist, which dentistry gets a bad rap. I had a great time. So when it came to, deciding what I wanted to do, I wanted to do something in healthcare. I have a sister who is a doctor, and she's a gastroenterologist, which means like a million years in school. And I didn't wanna do that. I was chatting with someone on vacation who was a dental hygienist, and it just got the gears turning. So long story short, I decided to become one. I went to school. I love dentistry as a field. I love being a hygienist and, ergonomics I thought I was going to be working with patients until I retired I was not planning on going down the road that I've gone down, but with my own experience with pain, that's why I started learning about ergonomics and I realized how important it really is. They tell us in dentistry how important it is, but if you google dentist or dental hygienist or anyone in dentistry, you will see picture after picture of us just hunched over our patients. We know it's important. Do we practice it? Maybe there's some room for improvement there. So with my own experience, I, realized how important it is, and I just had a light bulb moment and I went back to school, got certified in ergonomics, started my company, and I've just been helping people ever since when, we're looking at dentistry, there is an opportunity there and it's beyond the receptionist in the front desk you had that light bulb moment that you referred to that perhaps bending over isn't the best step for dentists. I wanna roll with that. Are you more shifting to serving those folks in the dentistry area? Yeah, I am actually, probably about a year ago I really started having this identity crisis because I was like, I'm a hygienist and I have been taking care of patients for so long that just, our work becomes, I was not able to see patients as much because I was getting busy with my business, which is good, but then I'm just like, who am I? What am I doing? I don't know who I am anymore. So I'm trying to reframe it now as I do still, love clinical hygiene. I do it when I can, but my role now is to support dental clinicians with their ergonomics and help them practice safer so that they can continue to treat patients. No, I don't see patients as much as I would like. I do a lot of different things now with my business. I'm doing assessments and coaching, but I also create content. I have a podcast, I write articles. I consult with companies, all of my days are different. I'm doing a bunch of different stuff, but I'm just, trying to serve dental clinicians, so that they can continue to work on patients. What would you say the most interesting thing about going into your role right now serving dental clinicians? I guess the most surprising. Thing to me is just how normalized people's pain is. They consider, they're like, I'm a dentist, I'm an orthodontist, I'm a hygienist, I'm an assistant, whatever it is, we're all in pain. It's all normal. Like it's to be expected because we're in dentistry. And that mindset, probably is my biggest hurdle when I'm trying to educate people because I'm trying to open their minds to, it doesn't, you don't have to be in pain. You don't have to go home exhausted at the end of the day. You don't have to practice with your arms up here and like doing this thing or hunching over your patients. There is a better way to practice. And so that's probably been the most surprising thing to me. However, the pain rates are still extremely high, and that's surprising too,'cause you would think an increase in tech would make our lives better. But are we using those products? Do we know how to use those products to our benefit? So this, just the awareness of the fact that you can feel better and there are ergonomic educators out there for you. That's probably been the biggest surprising thing for me. absolutely fascinating that this profession of high paid professionals who went to school for many years and are getting paid because they can perform a function to their patients. And yet it's still very much ergonomics, 1970s or 1980s where Oh, it's just part of the job. Yeah. Having the back pain or the shoulder pain or the wrist pain or the hand pain, you're gonna get that as part of the job and it's absolutely so fascinating to me. And I wanna talk a bit about your voice for the ergonomics and the dental space, which is very few and far between of professionals doing this in the first place. So I wanted to get really down to the idea of what inspired you to start sharing your knowledge publicly. When I first started my business, I actually, I did not know anything about running a business. So I hired a friend, and she's also a business coach, and she helped me for the first three months of my business. I wasn't really on social media at the time, and to be frank with you, Darcy, if I didn't have my business, I probably would not be on social media. but she was like, I want you to post one thing per week on ergonomics. And I was like, okay, I can do that. So I started and I didn't have a big following at the time. We all start from somewhere. And I just started posting little facts that I was learning. It was almost like I was posting as I was learning things. So I would learn about pinch force, how we hold our instruments. I would learn about head position, where we want our head, just these little tips. And they really started resonating with people because like you said, there's not a whole lot of us out here that are talking about this. So that one post per week turned into three posts per week and then it was every day. And then I started doing video, which really opened up how I can share this information. I want to give as much away. That I can for free so that people can learn how to better take care of themselves. A lot of what I post, if people really take to heart what I'm posting, and I don't know if this is probably bad for my business to say this, but if they do everything that I've posted for free, they don't need to hire me. I give away everything I know for free. That's actually been the driver really is just to educate as much as I can. And then creating video too has been, I do educational videos, but I also do funny type things that just, I like to spread humor and make people laugh. And it's opened up a way to help me be creative as well. There's so many of our listeners who are hesitant about going onto social media, whether it's LinkedIn or another platform. Because of the facts that are needed to be shared on a daily basis. And, it's almost like that is the hesitation for moving forward. It's that commitment that's required for long-term success. But you really shared the value of that, that it's helping those people who are in need of help I also lecture on ergonomics too. one of my strategies was after I built, my PowerPoint presentation and started lecturing, I was like, what if I just take little snippets of this lecture and turn that into a post? So there's actually, I'm overloaded with ideas and information to post. And so there, that's never the issue. But social media too, that's a whole nother conversation, but I think the key to growth is being consistent and just really remembering who you're serving and who you're trying to help. One thing about what you bring to the market, you have the lingo, the terms of the dental space. So if you're listening to this right now and you wanna help those people in dentistry and we go to the dentist every six months or whatever it is, and then whatever you're doing to get caught up on the lingo, I think that we have a really good opportunity here with Stephanie. And you can be a follower, you can connect, maybe you can provide value to Stephanie as well. There would be so much opportunity to be a part of Stephanie's network because really we're talking about niche ergonomics and dentistry. there's so much opportunity and it's so difficult for me to really pinpoint the magnitude of this opportunity. I was looking at some research this other week and it was just showing how many. Dentists orthos. Hygienists are just working in pain. I actually put that in an infographic for my members of Accelerate because this is a huge opportunity and ergonomics doesn't stop, at the receptionist. It's sharing value in this space. So if you were gonna break into the dental Orthon hygiene as an what's the first thing that we need to understand about this space? I think the hardest thing,'cause I work with office workers too, and I think the hardest thing for dental clinicians, when you're trying to help someone in dentistry with ergonomics is. We're working on a patient. And that's one of the hardest things because most, if you think about dentistry, I wish this connotation wasn't out there, but it is. Most people have this negative association with the dentist. They hate going to the dentist where the butt of jokes, like whatever. But when you think about a patient coming in, you're trying to keep that patient comfortable. Reducing the fear, reducing the anxiety. Patients are alive and sometimes they don't like to be in the optimal position that we need them in. And that's the problem with dentistry is we're caretakers and a lot of times we will put the patient's need before our own. And so we position them in a way that's comfortable for them. But what does that mean for us? It means we're twisting. It means we're reaching, it means we're doing this thing where we're like literally upside down trying to look at them. So that's the biggest struggle with dentistry. And it's also really, I guess I would be remiss to say that you got into this via office ergonomics assessments. So would it be too far? Of a guess that an optimal working physician for a dentist hygienist would be very similar to an office ergonomic setup. It is, when I talk about, keyboard placement or mouse placement, we want that. The, what I recommend is we want that at the level of our elbow, about when we're in neutral posture. Okay. It's the same thing with the patient's mouth. That's where the patient's mouth needs to be. That's our work surface, if you wanna think of it that way. And a lot of times the patient's mouth is positioned too high because many times the patients do not like to be reclined in the chair all the way. So when that work surface the patient's mouth, is too high, then we're out here, we're abducting our arms, we're struggling, our shoulders, we're like doing this. patient care is different than working on a desk. And, you're bringing up something really interesting. It's the soft skills when it comes to optimal work posture and how much more difficult this could be. Because if you're looking at whether or not a patient wants to set up a mutually beneficial, optimal workstation for the dentist, is that a need or a want for them? Is that their preference to have their head at a certain position? Or is it a physical need where they're needing to sit in a position for 30 minutes because of their own personal health issues? Do you ever get into concerns like that? We're looking at soft skills too. if you're coming to a situation where there is a dental hygienist or a dentist or an ortho, who's trying to work on a particular patient, would you say there is more soft skills to this equation and sharing why it's so valuable for that person to be sitting in a reclined position at a certain height rather than a little bit higher or a little bit lower. Because at the end of the day, that person is gonna be sacrificing their body to work at that particular hand working height. if that patient, doesn't understand what's at stake for a certain position, for that clinician, there could be bigger issues if that person is working in that, awkward position for longer periods of time. in your background as a healthcare professional, is it more like the soft skills for explaining The value of them sitting a little bit lower or more reclined in a chair there are soft skills, there's patient management, technique here. When we're talking about patients, they don't understand that, if they're not reclined all the way, that means we're gonna be literally hurting for the next hour or whatever it is. They don't get it. I also teach people how to frame things in a way that, is letting the patient know what we need and why we need it, I need you all the way back for this area. If I can't see, I can't do as good of a job for you, and I wanna do a really good job for you. So there is patient management that goes into it as well. It's not just, recline the patient to this position and then you're good. Yeah. It's like we have to learn how to talk to our patients too. you're hitting. The nail of my question in the head, because typically as ergonomists, you're just going in and you look at how that client is working at a computer or a monitor, and you're applying the ergonomics principles to that, and it's fairly straightforward. Or if you're working in industrial ergonomics, you're looking at how that person, that operator is using the tools and you're determining whether or not they're working within the ergonomics, guidelines or standards. And this is so far in left field to me as a professional because it's that person that you are, also working with, and then all of the terms associated with that. I wanted to ask when it comes to the unique parts of. Performing ergonomics in the dental world. Can you go into a little bit more about the risks and some of the concerns that you have as, an ergonomics professional? Sure. So when we're looking at risk with dental clinicians, it doesn't matter if you're a dentist, hygienist, assistant specialist, the pain rates are up in the 90 percents for us. Most dental clinicians, if they're in the field long enough, will develop pain at the very least, pain at the very most injury disability surgery. My plan for taking care of myself was getting disability insurance. That's not a great plan because if you need, if you're in the shape that you need disability insurance, like you're pretty miserable. So we don't wanna get to that point. So it's, when I'm looking at dental clinicians, something as simple as just having the arm out here. We call it the chicken wing arm abduction. Very common with us in dentistry. A lot of people think it's normal. It's not. This will cause injury. Everybody who's listening, I'm sure knows this. This will cause injury over time. The way we are holding our instruments, a lot of us are just gripping, whatever it is that we're holding and we're causing a lot of strain. So it's like these little things. Will cumulatively add up and start causing pain or injury. I talk about this in my lectures. Everything I'm teaching you is not rocket science. There's no genius to this. But it does take a really high level of body awareness to realize what you're doing, which is not easy when you've got a patient in front of you that you're also trying to take care of. So there's a lot of different aspects to this. And honestly, if I didn't have my experience as a dental clinician and I was trying to help dental clinicians, there is a lot to learn. I'm not gonna lie. There is a lot to learn in dentistry as far as our mindsets and, the fact that we're working on patients too. Do you think it's too specialized for agonists who aren't in this field to get into? I don't think that it's too specialized. If someone really is passionate about helping dental clinicians, I would strongly encourage them to spend some time with dental clinicians to realize what the struggles are, what the issues are. Honestly, that's what I had to do. Darcy, I got my certification as an ergonomic assessment specialist. My background was on office workers or industrial ergonomics, or people working on an assembly line. There's nothing like that in dentistry. There's no ergonomic certification in dentistry yet. Hopefully that will change at some point, so I had to figure out. How does all this ergonomic knowledge apply to dentistry? And that's what I did, is I spent some time with dentists and specialists and assistants and hygienists to realize what the issues are, and then I was able to blend the two and create my program from there. But there are definitely unique challenges in dentistry, and you and I talked before this, a lot of it happens up here in the mind of dental clinicians to just understand that there is this better, smarter way to practice. Let's move on to practical guidance for consultants. There is opportunity. However, treating this like a regular office ergonomic assessment isn't gonna be the most value add. And maybe going into the literature of peer review journals likely will be part of the puzzle, but not provide overall picture. It's gonna be time spent with dentists to really hone your craft. So in your experience, what are some of the more high impact or low cost ergonomic fixes that you've seen work really well in the dentist? Are there some things that you would say we need to look at? Yeah, I guess there's a couple different facets to that. One is education, ergonomic education, whether it's an assessment or a course over lunch or something, has been shown to be effective in dental clinicians tweaking their habits a little bit. If we're talking about products, there are some great products out there for dental clinicians. Loops have been around for a long time. They haven't solved the problem because we see that pain is still really high in dental clinicians. A lot of loops out there, and I always break people's hearts when I say this. These loops are expensive. it's an investment that we all make or most of us make anyway. not all of them have been ergonomic because you put them on and it does magnify the teeth, which is great, but you're still having to flex your neck and look down at the patient, Which is not helpful for the neck. Now they have ergonomic loops where there's a bend in the scope, so it bends our vision and then we can see down into the patient's mouth and have a neutral head. So those hands down, I recommend for mostly everyone. Seating also is. A big deal. And I know before I learned ergonomics, I thought all stools were the same. Office chairs, like there's a million different office chairs. They're not all the same. we all have different needs, different heights. And it's the same with dental stools. So there's a particular type of stool called a saddle stool. I'm sitting on one right now. That's what I like for my office. That's what I recommend for dental clinicians too.'cause it really supports a neutral, spine. And there's some other like instruments and stuff like that. But I think dental clinicians, sometimes they see these new things like the ergonomic loops and they think it's like gimmicky or they think it's just a money grab or whatever. And I will stand, behind those until I die. It's not a scam. It really does make a difference. And same with So we need to look at the products that we're using every day and make sure that they're actually helping us and not hurting us. And I have even heard from my dental hygienist how expensive they are for her, so she didn't look into them. However, we all know that there's gonna be a return on investment, especially if you're gonna be looking at the duration of your career. So have you ever done that calculation for them? If it's$1,500 and they have even a two year career, would you say that it's well worth the cost? Yeah, I don't sit down crunch numbers or anything like that, but, I often use my own experience and I feel like I've had a unique experience in that I suffered the consequences of not practicing ergonomically. I know what that feels like. I know what chronic pain is and how it affects your life and your day and your mood and just everything. So I try to encourage people to think of it that way. Sure, maybe this pair of loops is$2,000. that is a lot of money. By the way, ergonomic loops, they're not necessarily more expensive than regular ones. I guess it depends on brands and stuff. But most of the times they're comparable to traditional loops. But anyways, I just try to encourage people to think, okay,$2,000 now. What if that saved you years of pain later? And I explained to them how miserable it is to live with chronic pain because I've been there and also surgery or missed days off of work. What if I had plenty of missed days from work. I lost a lot of money because I could not practice. So trying to get people to think of that in the long term. And also using analogies with patient care. We understand if patients don't, let's say, floss their teeth or come in for their regular appointments, a lot of times that will translate to these huge costs later on having to fix teeth or get teeth pulled or get implants or whatever it is. So a lot of times framing it in something that they understand, which is patient care, will help them be like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. if we don't invest now, it is very likely that we're gonna pay for it later in one way or another. It's just reframing it, it's not a cost, it's an investment and you're protecting yourself for the future. It can feel like a big hit initially, but I say in my presentations, we have one neck, literally one neck, and it has to last hopefully 80, 90 plus years. It's not gonna last if we're in this constant forward head position with our neck just flexed and tense the whole time, like it's gonna break at some point. So it really is a no brainer to invest in these ergonomic loops. We talked about the neck up ergonomic loops, and we talked about the types of chairs. You're saying saddle chairs. Now, what about the types of tools? Is there a particular weight that you would recommend for tools not to go beyond? Or is it a brand that's really awesome? I mean there's a lot of different brands out there. the thing that I care about most when it comes to instruments is the handle. We want to make sure whether it's our instruments that people are using or the mirrors that people are using, that it's got a nice wide fat handle. There's still a lot of skinny handles out there that increases pinch force, which can be a cause of injury. Take a look not only at their instruments, but at their mirror, because 90% of the time when I'm doing assessments, the instruments that they're using, whether it's a hygiene, scalor, like a cleaning instrument is ergonomic, it's great. But these mirrors, they still got these heavy, like really skinny handled mirrors in their kits, which isn't doing them any favors. So that's what I care about most with instruments. Would you recommend any particular brands that would be more advisable?'cause all these things have to be stainless steel'cause they have to go through the machines right. To get cleaned. Are there any particular, brands that would be more ergonomic that you found that, that people really like? I know that there's more brands than this, but, for mirrors, my favorite is zerk. ZIRC. They've got some great ergonomic mirrors for hygiene instruments. Some brands are PDT. Those are my favorite. Hugh Freed's. Good. American Eagle has some nice ones for, dentists, restorative instruments. Hugh Friedy and PDT both actually have some good ones, but really it's just making sure that the handle has been designed, in an ergonomic way. In terms of ergonomics, countermeasures, you know the drill, we look at the engineering, we look at the administrative. Now administratively, I wanted to dive down a little bit more. So we're looking at either like job enlargement, job rotation. Do you ever recommend a client to do a certain task in a certain order, or is that like beyond the scope of what an ergonomists has the power to recommend? Yeah. As far as scheduling, that's a great question. A lot of scheduling is based on the provider's personal preference. There's some dentists that prefer to do all of their big procedures on one day. There's some that like to alternate and have big procedure, and then maybe a couple little ones and then a bigger one, couple little ones, Me personally, I think it makes more sense to have some variation during your day and not be stuck in one appointment for four hours straight, because that means that you're probably sitting in one spot for a fair amount of time. So I'll look at the schedule and, if they want to discuss a better way to schedule, I'll. Suggest, trying to alternate some of these bigger, longer procedures with something that maybe takes an hour or half an hour, something that they can get up and move around. And so that they're not so locked in. same with hygienists, it's a little bit different, but there are longer procedures that we do if someone has gum disease and then there's shorter ones where maybe the patient is more healthy. I think having some variation with those and not just not doing the same thing over and over can help. It's a precise task, Yeah. I can only imagine that's not only a high mental workload, but also, everything with those pinch tasks and those pinch grips. And there's procedures too, especially on the dentist side where if someone comes in for a full set of veneers, that is a long appointment. And it's not like you can do like a few of the front teeth and leave them with a few of the front teeth. Not done. That's not okay. So there's some times where you are gonna have to be stuck there for a long time. I really recommend trying to alternate sitting and standing for dental clinicians. A lot of people think that they have to sit the whole time and that's just not true. So I do try if the doc is gonna be sitting down for a two hour type surgery or whatever, find time where you can stand up and move your body a little bit. And man, the people that start doing that, they feel a lot better. Wow. Okay. My mind is blown. Sit to stand, obviously. Great suggestion, but do you mean sit to stand, move your patient to so that the whole chair is higher and you're standing, working in their mouth. Yes. So you need to vertically raise the patient chair just like you would with a standing desk, raise the height of the patient chair so that their mouth, is still at your elbows, but when you're standing. So it's just, it takes five seconds to stand up and then raise the patient chair up. Mind blown. Yeah. How many of your dentist are doing stuff like that? Or your hygienists are doing that, I don't think enough are doing it intentionally. when I developed pain, it was in my low back and it would flare up every now and then, My team knew that Steph was in pain because she was standing, because when I would stand, it felt better on my back than if I was sitting down. But once I started learning about ergonomics, I was like, oh my God, this needs to be like standard practice, for us to move around.'cause it just makes sense, right? There's some dentists that will stand for extractions because they need leverage and they need a bit more, visibility and standing helps with that. But I'm like, why not do that when you're filling teeth? Why not do that when you're giving injections? Yeah. And it just they're like, I don't know. I don't know why I don't do that. That makes sense. And so they'll start doing it. So I wish more people would do it intentionally. It really just makes sense to make it part of your day. your client's, life with that whole idea. And, we did talk about that as like a behavioral and an administrative type of control, which is so valuable because I know my listeners, their heads are also expanding with knowledge as I speak.'cause that is huge. And I wanted to actually talk about the reach position as well. So we talked about like the hand working height for reach position and, getting as close as possible to that mouth.'cause as we know from the ergonomics perspective, that forward reach would be really hard on the shoulder, is there something in terms of the worker's habit that you would ever add coaching to? Or is that just Hey, let's get that patient as close as possible to you and that's going to give some value in terms of reducing the ergonomic risk in the shoulder. Is that, what a typical recommendation could be? Yeah. So if we're talking about, trying to minimize reaching, yes, it is getting as close to your like target as possible, right? Which is the patient's mouth. That's another benefit of saddle stools. So when I'm talking about a saddle stool, it's like it's a stool, but you also want it to be positioned pretty high so that the clinician's hips are above their knees. Okay. What we don't want is to be sitting in like a regular stool with the legs jetting out in front of us because those legs are getting in the way. We cannot get close to our patient chair if our legs are in the way. Yeah. So we need those legs pointed down towards the floor, which is what you get on a saddle, and then you can get right up on your patient. there's something else in dentistry call, we're all taught this in school clock positions The patient, everything's centered around the patient. Okay. And then we want to, based off of, if you think of a clock and your patient being in the middle of that clock, you've got 12 o'clock, which means the clinician is right directly behind the patient at 12 o'clock. but then we go, depending on if you're a righty or a lefty that dictates your clock position. I'm a, right-handed clinician, so I'm at nine o'clock. So we've got 12 o'clock right behind the patient, nine o'clock, which is to the side, and then we've got eight and seven o'clock, which those I don't really recommend. But anyways, we're all taught, this is the issue I have with school is, Ergonomics are not something that's really standardized, and so some people are taught to only. Work on the teeth from nine o'clock. And then some people are taught to work from 12 o'clock or one o'clock, which may or may not be the best thing for them, depending on what clock position we're in, dictates how close or not close we can be to the patient. I recommend trying to really work from behind the patient at that 11 to one o'clock position. That seems to be the best place for us. And then if we're off to the side, you wanna make sure that you're squared up to your patient, not like twisting or doing any of these awkward movements. So there's, it's funny, I talk about ergonomics. I think about it all the time. I'm in dentistry, and it's you don't realize how much there is to it until you start having a conversation like this. And there's a lot to it. And it's I just realize that every now and then. This is what I think holds many agonists back from going into this field because there's much more to it. There is, I have a question about a particular type of chair. And this is a chair that members of the Accelerate program we've talked about. It's a saddle chair and then there's a horizontal arm bar in the front. is that a good enough description for you to know what type of chair I'm referring to? It sounds like you might be talking about a dental assistant stool. They're tough. The whole point, if you think of a dental assistant what they're doing is they're providing support for the dentist. They're off to the side. A lot of times when they're assisting the doctor in this way, their job is to transfer instruments to hand the dentist what they need, and to also give suction to the patient. There's a lot of water that's happening in the mouth, and we need to control that with suction. So they've got two jobs, but. The point of that bar supposedly is to give them support because oftentimes they're leaning forward because they have to lean forward to see into the mouth. But that bar, and like I understand maybe it gives support, but also a lot of times it's not adjusted correctly and it's almost this, temptation to hunch over because they've got something to lean on. that's not necessarily what it's for. So anyways, one of my big goals before I retire is to completely redesign the dental assistance stool, into something completely different because it really doesn't promote an upright healthy posture for dental assistance. That's what we have right now. We try to make it work as best we can for dental assistant stools. I would love it if everyone used a saddle type seat pan and had a back rest. Dental assistants have some of the highest rates of low back pain amongst all of us, and it's because if you look at how a dental assistant practices, they're hunched over and a lot of times they're in this fixed, twisted position and trying to work on the patient and being like that for hours a day. It's just not good for them. I guess my answer is it's what we have. We're trying to make it work. Is it the best? No. I think that we can come up with something better. We just haven't yet. When you are working with, dental assistants and dental, hygienists and dentists and orthos. I wanted to dive into a little bit more about, the role of behavior change. And if you have noticed that your suggestions of getting up or working with a certain posture, if that has been more valuable than buying them expensive equipment or the chairs, It is tough because everyone's different. Some people, they can have great body habits, like they're not reaching, they're not twisting, they're very aware of what they're doing, but their loops suck because they're doing this. And so it's this person, literally all they need is a pair of ergonomic loops, and they're gonna be great. This person over here maybe has the ergonomic loops in the saddle chair and all of these things, and yet they're still reaching, they're doing all these crazy things. They're reaching forward, they're twisting, they don't have things organized correctly. So that's more of a behavior change. And honestly, everyone's different, but you can figure out pretty quickly is this more of a habit change type person or does this person just need a product that will better support them? Because there's some clinicians that are, I'm almost like, you don't need me. You just need a better pair of loops and you're gonna be fine. So it just depends. Yeah. That is so brilliant. But they do need you to make that recommendation, otherwise they would've never seen that. And with the habits too. That's so huge.'cause I've worked with people that, they've got the ergonomic loops, which is great, but because their operatory or operatory is like the room that we're working in, because it's not organized in the right way. They're doing this full arm reach hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times at the end of the day. Or they're doing a cross body reach constantly because they're trying to grab things. So some of it is like organization too. That's a whole nother layer of ergonomics as well. So I think that rolls into my next question. do you provide any education or resources or coaching specifically for ergonomics consultants who wanna learn more about getting into this type of service? Yeah, I had mentioned earlier, there is no ergonomic dental certification. I do think that's something that's needed. And I'm not the only one that talks about ergonomics and dentistry. There's a few of us, but not nearly enough. So part of my five year plan, I would love to create at least something to give some background to people who can then start helping more dental clinicians because we need a lot of help. Short answer, no, there isn't anything that exists now to my knowledge at least. And, it is on my list of things to do in the future. We'll keep an eye out for that for sure. And I know from this. Podcast episode that there's gonna be some people who hungry to get information from you. So you are probably gonna get more followers or more requests from, ergonomists because this is very much a hot topic. It really is a hot topic. As we roll into the end of this episode, I wanted to touch base on just the pitching because there's a language to this that you are hinting to for the duration of this episode. And is there any simple advice that you would give to someone who wants to pitch ergonomic services to a dental or an ortho practice? I think too, and by the way, I wanted to mention, if anyone wants to contact me, ask me any questions, please feel free. I'm on social media, I've my email, whatever. I'm happy to help you. But I think for dental clinicians, meeting them where they're at, which is most of them are in pain. Letting people know that a lot of dental clinicians are in pain, however, it does not have to be that way. Providing information on the benefits to them. Not going home exhausted at the end of the day, not having to cancel your day because your neck or your back is out again, especially for practice owners, a lot of this is talking to the people who own the practice and their language is money. And so if we're having to cancel patients because someone's injured, that's lost money for that day. Investing in ergonomic training will help reduce those loss days, which increases revenue, but also. A lot of dental clinicians are, in pain. They're burnt out, they're tired. investing in something like this will help them not be tired and burnt out. But also as a practice owner bringing this service to your team, it will show them that you care about them, you care about their wellbeing, and you're investing in this training so that they feel better. And that's also goes a long way for morale and the feel goods that we all like. Those are such worthwhile angles, and it connects with the really important, if we can connect on the dollar value, then we can also connect on the morale and more of the soft elements as well and bring in a whole holistic picture. And right now too, we're having a huge staffing crisis in dentistry where it's very hard to find. Team members, you wanna take care of those team members that you have. If they leave you or have to leave because of surgery some of these operatories that are out there are, not ergonomic at all, and they are hurting people. And so if you have someone that's leaving because of that, it's gonna be tough for you to find someone. So we wanna maintain our team. It's almost like looking at your team as like equipment that we need to maintain. That's a harsh way to look at it, but we do need to maintain them. So it's much easier to maintain it versus starting over and trying to find someone to fill a spot because someone's left. Stephanie, I wanna thank you so much for spending your. Time with us today and sharing your hard earned expertise with the listeners of this podcast.

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