Lunch & Learn: What You Need to Know Coming Out of Dental School with Dr. Justin Kiggins
The Temple Kornberg School of Dentistry hosted Dr. Justin Kiggins on September 16th, 2024 in Timmons Hall for a Lunch & Learn.
Dr. Kiggins shared several pieces of information and advice during this session. He predominately focused on continuing education and how to interact with a patient.
Dr. Kiggins emphasized the importance of Continuing Education courses. He talked about how these courses not only kept his skills sharp, but that they also taught him new techniques and gave him new options to treat his patients. With these new skills, he was able to take on more challenging cases as well as cases he wouldn’t have been able to take on without them, and gave an example of one at the end of the lecture. When Dr. Kiggins was still an associate, he mentioned that a patient wanted to come to him over another dentist in the area. When he asked why, that patient said that the dentist belittled him. Patients don’t want to interact with a dentist that they think is rude, greedy, and snobby. Instead, patients want to interact with a dentist that’s basically a normal person. He took this realization to heart and it became the basis of how to interact with his patients from now on.
Dr. Kiggins gave us several resources that he found helpful, including books, podcasts, continuing education groups, and online resources. I’ve been using these, mostly the podcasts, to continue to learn about running a practice both from a personal and business standpoint.