Like many of you, I am more than 20 years into my dental career, and it’s not often that I do something for the first time anymore. I guess that’s what the word “practice” is all about: the repeated act of doing something until you get really good at it. Malcolm Gladwell, a writer and one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2005, wrote that to be considered an expert you have to spend 10,000 hours, or roughly 10 years, repeating something. For many of us, it’s hard to get fooled by crown preps anymore. I remember needing to do 29 crowns in order to graduate from dental school and that seemed like a lot. I feel sorry for whoever got my 30th crown, and I doubt my 300th was much better.

However, with repetition comes monotony. When was the last time you were really pumped to prep tooth #18? Did you high-five your assistant on the way into the operatory? It was during another humdrum prep that somebody at the lab suggested to me the idea of surgically placing my first implant. This individual challenged me by saying there was so much technology built into Glidewell’s Digital Treatment Planning services that it would make up for my lack of experience. It took me a few months to build up the courage to try a new surgical procedure for the first time, but I agreed to the challenge. And we documented the entire thing for my newest clinical video, “My First Implant.”

All the implant CE I had taken up to this point was from surgeons who had been placing implants for years. They made it look simple, which didn’t make me feel like it would be any easier; in fact, it made me feel like continuing to refer my implant cases out. That all changed with Glidewell’s Digital Treatment Planning, and you can see the steps in the My First Implant photo essay here. For an even better look, visit glidewelldental.com to watch me do my first implant in HD. This might be the least intimidating educational program you will ever watch.