Doctors MEET: How Collaborating with Other Dental Professionals Leads to Growth
September, 2019
As summer 2019 wound down, the MIS Expert Experience Team, otherwise known as MEET, met up at MIS HQ for several days of learning and sharing their experiences. They even went on to do some brainstorming with the Makeathoners, to come up with the next exciting product which can improve both their work and the lives of their patients.
MEET is a mutual learning platform. The group focuses on opening up their own personal knowledge bases and clinical experience to the rest of the members in the group, as a way of helping each other grow, and perfect their techniques and skills. But that’s only one aspect of the tremendous benefits the members gain from being in this unique group. They also help each other become mentors to other doctors, by improving their lecturing and presentation skills, and learn how to document their cases in a way that will help others in practical terms.
To this group, research is of utmost importance for mutual learning and mentoring. This is where MIS comes into the picture, providing group members with inside information from our own R&D department, and getting their feedback on new and existing products.
The group of 30 young professionals, highly motivated and passionate, flew in from all corners of the globe. There were doctors from all across Central and South America, including Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Panama. They were joined by doctors from Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and the US.
Dr. Victor Clavijo from Brazil, has been leading the MEET project since it started a little over a year ago. Dr. Clavijo has been a key opinion leader and lecturer at many MIS events around the world for the last several years. He is passionate about learning, teaching, and helping colleagues improve the treatment they provide their patients, while advancing in their field of expertise. He is a huge supporter and practitioner of mentoring, and believes “a true mentor is someone who puts aside their own ambitions for recognition, and focuses on simply sharing what they know with their mentees in order to reach the final goal of making the patient happy".
As part of their day together, the MEET group were treated to a very informative and practical lecture and demonstration by Dr. Mirela Feraru on the ins and outs of high quality dental photography. Dr. Feraru actually brought in the equipment she uses, and set up a mini studio to show the group how to get the best possible shot for their clinical case documentation needs. She believes that photography should be part of the regular protocols that each doctor follows when treating their patients, and that high quality results require the right tools and a well-trained staff. Everyone was impressed to see the incredible images that she is able to produce. These images aid her in determining the state of the patient and what the procedure needs to include. Documenting the final results in this way, also enable her to help other doctors in their work.
For the rest of their time together as MEET, the group shared their cases in this collaborative and very productive forum. Different members presented their most challenging cases, or those that they themselves learned from the most, discussing procedures, techniques and results.