Seminar title: America's Next Top Hygienist!
Presenters: Kelli Swanson Jaecks, RDH, Monica Oakley, BSN, and Cheryl Thomas, RDH
Status: The first part of the seminar, which begins at 8 a.m. on Thursday, July 31, is a general session that can hold up to 300 people. The second part of the seminar is a small group workshop that is already sold out (but interested attendees can be placed on waiting lists) at the RDH Under One Roof conference to see if a spot opens up.
RDH eVillage critique: Hu-Friedy is the primary corporate sponsor of this course. The Chicago-based dental company is a sponsor because it believes in enhancing the networking and communication between all dental team members. Remember, the company is just one of the very few dental firms who have an online social network (Friends of Hu-Friedy).
The course title is probably a little misleading, since it most definitely is not a contest or a competition to determine the "top" member of the audience, or any other grouping of dental hygienists. But the interactive tone of the seminar does encourage attendees to think — quite often aloud to the presenters or neighbors in the audience — about incidents in their careers that they wished they hand handled better.
So while the DiSC personality tests administered by the presenters are the stars of the show, since the test results provide immediate insights about yourself, it's actually the role-playing that's the most fascinating aspect of the seminar.
Why? It's the way the presenters "behave." They represent three of the four personality groups established by the DiSC tests. The fourth group is often viewed as the uncontroversial facilitator who just wants "everyone to get along," so the missing link is not that relevant during the seminar. The most amusing (as in laughing out loud) presenter is Swanson Jaecks, whose perky, cheerleading "i" personality is a riot during most of the interactive role-playing. But Oakley's "dominance" personality and Thomas' "steadiness" personality also are funny and memorable. All three presenters interact with each other very well — a hopeful sign to dental professionals who longingly ache to communicate well with differing personalities within a practice.
What attendees can expect to take home with them after this seminar at the RDH Under One Roof conference is an enhanced perspective of how they communicate with their peers in a dental office. And that perspective can only help in the high pressure work environment associated with dentistry.
