Dental associateship interview questions

Working as an associate can provide many advantages.

 You can focus on practicing your skills and developing relationships with your patients without the concerns and challenges of managing a business.

 You can enjoy an assured income and employment benefits, have an opportunity to learn from colleagues, and perhaps evolve to buy-in status with shared responsibilities for practice success. 

This choice may be ideal if you’re comfortable with a predictable lifestyle, prefer to focus on a few areas of expertise, and don’t want to take on the challenge of managing the administrative details of owning a business.

But owning your own practice gives you a better opportunity to gain control over your professional life. 

Practice ownership puts you in charge of the quality of care, patient and practice environment, customer service, and operation of your practice.

 It enables you to set goals for your future.

 And while ownership certainly includes the challenges of meeting financial performance objectives as well as personnel management, customer billing, and marketing activities, it also brings the great sense of accomplishment that comes from creating a successful enterprise.

So how do you know when it’s time to make the move to ownership? Answer the following questions:

• Do you resent reporting to a colleague and working according to someone else’s schedule?
• Do you feel you have absorbed your employer’s management skills and responsibilities and are capable of running the practice yourself?
• Is your level of confidence and clinical speed beyond the third year dental school level?
• Are your case presentation skills well developed?

If you answered yes to at least three of these questions, then it’s time to consider owning your own practice.