Of course nothing is perfect but I wanted to share some ideas on how you can have as much of what you need chair side to limit the time away from the chair. In my experience, it’s not the doing of the work that is the time killer, it’s the getting ready, getting up to get what you forgot and the logistics chair turnover that eat an orthodontic practice alive. Let’s have a look at these photos of our clinical chairs and chair side cabinets to see what I’m talking about.

If you look at the featured photo you will see what our chair side cart looks like. We have a computer at every chair and we make 98% of our appointments chair side and often without the parent there. This is a huge time saver. We also have a curing light and cavi-wipes on every cabinet. Both make a huge difference when it comes to the clinical work and turning over the chair. Here’s another look at the entire chair side cabinet with the first drawer open for perspective.

Here are photos of the drawer contents from top to bottom drawers:

As you can see, there is a place for everything and everything in its place. Every chair in the clinic has a chair side cart and every one is set up the same – or at least it’s supposed to be! Right down to the large gloves (my gloves) being on the right side of the bottom drawer so I know exactly where to go to get them and I don’t waste valuable time picking up the wrong ones. Systems, systems, systems are the key. Whether you see 10 or 100 or 200 patients a day it’s important to have systems and reduce each procedure to the least number of steps because efficiency allows you to do the same work in less time or more work in the same. Why wouldn’t you? Also, speed is appreciated by patients because they have better things to do than to hang out with us, no matter how cool we think we are!