The Ultimate Treatment Planning Course with Jason Smithson

1. The You – How to work more effectively in less time:

• Organise your mind.
• Deep vs Shallow tasks
• Diary optimisation
• Understanding what you want to achieve from dentistry
• How to say no.
• Strategies to manage the stress of a busy dental practice.

2. The Patient – How to Increase case acceptance and eliminate complaints

• The Pareto Principle: How to generate 80% of your work from 20% of your patients
• What does true active listening look like in a dental setting?
• The role of empathy and body language in case acceptance.
• Fast and efficient treatment planning for complex cases
• Why patients say no.
• Preventing patients slipping through the cracks – how to get from exam to treatment

3. The Examination – Rapid assessment of complex cases.

• What do you need to look out for in the masticatory system?
• The hard tissue exam and differentiating wear patterns.
• Assessing the periodontium and biologic width
• Endodontic assessment
• Radiograph rationales

4. The Photography – Photography as a tool for planning, teaching, and social media.

• Consent for GDPR compliance.
• Equipment and accessories, settings and protocols for beautiful but efficient image capture.
• Full photographic series required for treatment planning
• Product and labwork photography. Artistic photography including bouncers

5. The Planning – Facially Generated Treatment Planning, begin with the end in mind.

• How to approach complex cases in a systematic way
• How to ensure you achieve maximal aesthetic outcomes
• How to plan with minimal chance of complication
• How to plan and schedule treatment in a logical manner.
• Digital Smile Design (DSD).
• Fundamentals of smile design – smile design parameters as this relates to the digital age.
• The concept of DSD. Practical aspects of DSD. Clinical cases displaying facially driven interdisciplinary dentistry driven by DSD.

6. The Occlusion – how to prevent your reconstruction from breaking.

• Practical, clinical occlusion as it relates to everyday dentistry.
• Tooth Surface Loss: causes and the effects on planning and treatment.
• How to create a perfect set of mounted records: facebow and occlusal registration.
• When should you treat in CR and when is MIP acceptable?
• Occlusal splints
• How to do an equilibration and when is it essential
• The diagnostic wax up
• The mock up: how to transfer the models to the mouth.

7. The Communication – how to draft a treatment plan and write a letter

• Communication media: letter | email | phone.
• Letter structure: closing the circle.
• How to select and communicate with specialists
• Lab communication
• Medico-legal aspects
• Follow up.

8. Bringing It All Together

Learn, practice and perfect – use the skills learned throughout the modules in a treatment planning round table discussion of clinical cases.