Industry or Profession?

I said a short goodbye to my fourth decade Friday, Aug. 4 by facilitating a planning meeting for the Florida Dental Laboratory Association.  FDLA Co-Executive Directors Bennet Napier, CAE, and Adrienne Tooley, CMP, were there as well as the FDLA board of directors. It would be inappropriate to discuss the content of the meeting (exciting and inspiring stuff to be sure), but let me share with you two observations I left with that should resonate across our entire industry/profession.

First: Dental laboratory technology is it an industry or profession?

Second: Who decides?

Industry:
Any department or branch of art, occupation, or business; especially, one which employs much labor and capital and is a distinct branch of trade; as, the sugar industry; the iron industry; the cotton industry (the dental industry).

Profession:
That of which one professed knowledge; the occupation, if not mechanical, agricultural, or the like, to which one devotes one's self; the business which one professes to understand, and to follow for subsistence; calling; vocation; employment; as, the profession of arms; the profession of a clergyman, lawyer, or physician; the profession of lecturer on chemistry (the dental profession).

Dentists are clearly part of both. Dentists as professionals and dentistry the larger industry. Much like in medicine, physicians hold a similar rank. Nurses? Certainly. Pharmacists? Yes of course.  What about a medical device manufacturer?  Would an arteriole stent manufacturer think they were not part of the medical profession?  Would a custom prosthetic or orthotic manufacturer consider their actions casual or unprofessional? Of course not. They are clearly all professionals at what they do and how they serve within their industry.  Pharmacist filling prescriptions that physicians have written are not only professionals within medicine; they are one of the most trusted professionals when Gallup polls honesty, ethic and trust.

Nurses and pharmacists alternate the top spot most years because the public perceives that they are not in a direct financial gain path in health care. Hear that another way. Because they are not perceived to gain financially directly from the doctors’ recommendations, they can be trusted at the highest level. There is not a financial motive driving their advice or support. This is not quite as true as it seems, but public perception overrides subtle financial relationships and dependencies. Dental laboratory technicians do not even make the list. Not because we are any different than the pharmacists in this model, rather because the public does not even know we exist!

Who decides? We do, by our actions or inactions, self-promotion or lack of self-promotion, professionalism or lack thereof. Dentists today do not learn how to do the laboratory work that they must judge, they only learn about it. They have a full four years and too much to learn. We could choose to sit silently by and let them lord over us as though we are an unimportant peripheral piece of this dental industry or we can choose to step up professionally and be heard. The health and safety of the public is at stake here. The integrity of the custom manufacture of dental prosthesis is the domain of professional dental laboratory technicians.  If we choose to neglect that responsibility, let it be by conscious choice rather than by apathy or ignorance. Much as dentists shook the traveling barber and tooth puller label and became a true profession and member of the health care team, so too should we choose to accept the role we have with the same character.

The future of dentistry, dentists and dental laboratory technicians; the health and safety of the public and the patients; and the well being of the entire industry of dentistry is dependent on professionals acting in the best interest of the ultimate service objective - the patient. Our role in the delivery of restorative dental care, improvement of access to care and in insurance of the quality of care should hold us in a collaborative relationship with like-minded professionals. Stand up. Be the voice. Proclaim the profession of dental laboratory technology within the dental industry as proudly as other members do.

Industry or profession?  Both, and proud of it.