EPISODE 7: THE ONTARIO ALLIANCE OF DENTISTS

Show Notes

Summary

How protected are you as a dentist? Do you have someone who can support you when the challenges start to pile up?

Our guest is Dr. Kal Khaled. He's been a practicing dentist in Ontario for 30 years.

I invited him today to discuss an organization that he has created to advocate on behalf of dentists in Ontario. It is the Ontario Alliance of Dentists, and you can find the organization at www.the-oad.ca

And I am so grateful that I have Dr Khaled to discuss the big idea behind this.

Today's episode is full of useful information that will get you thinking about how you can protect yourself and your practice, and why you need that kind of support.

Topics discussed in today’s episode:

1. [0:02:52] Thechallenges come with those changes though. Medical legally things have changed a lot. From an IPAC sterilization issue, things have changed a lot. From, I won't say disciplinary issues, but rules and regulations in every province. Consent issues.
2. [0:03:17] And talking to so many of my dentist friends and colleagues, I felt, who's helping us? The mandates of the colleges are not to help the dentist, it's to protect the public, which is wonderful.
3. [0:05:01] I felt we needed an organization that isn't called a Dental Association, but a Dentists Association.
4. [0:08:00] So in the United States, leadership and education and many of the guidelines and safety is being led by the ADA with dentist feedback. And obviously they have proper protocols and experts, but it's not led by their college boards.
5. [0:10:35] So I think there is a leadership vacuum. Bureaucracy has a way of growing and becoming more powerful..
6. [0:11:07] My goal is to create an organization that supports dentists, period. Working dentists in private practice, primarily. Academic dentists have a different set of priorities, obviously, and research dentists have a different set of priorities, but I felt there was a void in the working dentist.
7. [0:12:42] So I feel that we're kind of naked at work. A patient can say something, a staff member can say something and we're on our own. Every man for himself, so to speak. And I think that's not right. We should have support.
8. [0:13:52] So my goal is to offer something that will be worth it to the new member. And currently what we're working on, the first step, is access to the ITRANS network, the EDI network.
9. [0:14:30] You are not allowed to use that network unless you're a member of the local dental association. So we feel about is a limit to trade in Canada.
10. [0:15:33] And if we can have access to the network through this association, members, dentists can therefore join this association at a much lower fee, get access to EDI and the benefits of membership without access to the convention, billboards, courses, and these deals that we get on rent-a-cars and so on that the ODA provides.
11. [0:18:28] So there's a deafness that exists right now, which would be really cool if they turned it around. But the level of bureaucracy in larger organizations is high. They have a hard time changing their path and their protocols.
12. [0:27:42] The purpose isn't just to save us money. My real goal is an advocacy group. But I feel dentists won't really join two associations, spent a lot of money, until they see some value. And that's what I'm trying to create for some value.
13. [0:29:28] Bottom line is, when I speak to dentists we're really good at hiding our weaknesses. We don't want to present the fact that we have financial problems or personal issues, divorce issues, drug use, lawsuits, staffing issues. We don't really like to talk about these things, even with our colleagues. It's very difficult.
14. [0:30:17] And I feel that we need help more than just courses and billboards. We're really in need right now. We're going to go through a bit of a crisis with this virus issue, financial and personal. And so we really need an advocacy group to step up.

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