The Queen of practice management is back

Jennifer de St Georges is returning to Australia in October to build on the success of last year'sPractice Management for the 21st Century with a brand new full day programme.

"I lecture all over the world but I always enjoy visiting Australia," Ms de St Georges said. "It's somewhere in between my native UK and my second home in San Francisco and all the great people who come to my seminars are very open and honest about what's going on in their practices. We have a lot of fun working through the issues that not surprisingly exist everywhere in dental practice.

"We had around 600 people attend the programme last year, so this year we looked at how to structure a new programme that dealt with the areas of most interest in Australia right now.

"So for 2005, we've come up with a full day programme in each of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

"We decided it would be very worthwhile to revisit scheduling for some of the morning as this is the key to every successful practice.

"If you didn't attend last time, this will be an invaluable walk through of all the key concepts for effectively scheduling. If you did participate last year, this is the perfect occassion to discuss your success stories or work through any issues in an open forum.

"Following scheduling, we've come up with a programme designed to give you the fundamentals for building your dream practice.

"Many practices in Australia are following a trend that started in the States towards delivering more comprehensive procedures including cosmetic dentistry. Good clinical skills alone, however, will not achieve your goals in this area unless you have your entire team supporting you and the practice is running efficiently and effectively.

"From the moment your patient walks in the door, we will work through how the patient experience can be enhanced as your dream team goes into action.

"We will also discuss the money side of the practice which I touched on last year and ended up spending quite a bit of time on. It's obviously an area of interest and still creating issues so we'll work through the concept of the patient emotionally 'buying' into treatment as well as the actual mechanics of the types of payment options you should be offering.

"It will be a full day of pure practice management and there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss issues specific to your practice.

"The important thing is to come along for the day and bring your whole team. To make it easier this year, we've altered the pricing so it's one price for all as both dentists and staff need to participate - you will get much more from the event this way. We've also included Perth on the schedule as well as many people travelled across last time to the eastern states and it's been several years since I spoke there last.

"I do look forward to being back in October and catching up with all my Australian friends and hope you are all able to attend the programme."