Why do continuing dental education courses perpetuate the credentials-attract-patients myth?
Because their economic model depends on it. CE course providers fill their classrooms with paying doctors. If course instructors openly acknowledged that the techniques being taught would not translate into routine practice use without parallel investment in marketing and selling systems, enrollment would collapse. The honest disclosure would force prospective attendees to confront the question of whether they actually have the patient pipeline to use what they are about to learn. Most attendees do not. They are taking the course on the implicit assumption that the credential plus the technique will somehow produce the patients. The CE provider cannot make that assumption true, but acknowledging that it is false would put the provider out of business. The result is a structural conspiracy of silence across the post-graduate education ecosystem. Courses get sold, certificates get issued, photos get posted in journals, and back in their practices the doctors who paid $3,000 to $5,000 for a three-day course or $40,000 to $60,000 for a multi-year continuum find that the clinical skills they acquired sit largely unused. The problem is not the clinical content. The problem is the unstated assumption that selling the courses depends on preserving.
If the answers you are finding here resonate with you, my team and I work with a small group of clients each year. The next step is a complimentary Discovery Consultation and Practice Review with Dr. McAnally.