Over the last few years as I have become more involved in the CEREC community, I have had the pleasure of being surrounded by some incredibly talented dentists. Often these dentists will show me their cases and I am constantly in awe of what they have accomplished in such a short amount of time using their CEREC. What I love even more is their drive on how to improve their skills even more. My constant push (and often harassment) is to get these doctors to post their cases but posting can be intimidating. I hear over and over the same reasons why doctors won't post cases: "my work isn't good enough", "I don't have anything new to share", "people can be mean in their feedback and I don't want to be bullied", etc... As a CEREC doctor we take a lot of pride in our cases because often we create them with our own hands, so getting feedback feels personal. My point in this post is to show a progression of what you can do if you are vulnerable enough to put yourself out there and try.
Here are some of my early cases starting in 2010. I happen to have a really poor post-op photo of my very first anterior case. I was so proud of this when I first began using my CEREC.
One of the best pearls I got in a class was if you want to improve, start taking pictures of your cases, so I did. The problem was my photography wasn't stellar and I still didn't know what I was looking for to be able to make improvements. These restorations definitely made improvements in each of these patient's smiles, but now when I see these cases...
Jumping ahead a few years, I got involved with the mentor group and started posting cases more often. This case in particular was one that was emotional to my entire team because we watched the physical changes that took place with this patient after we changed her smile. I was so proud of this case. After I posted, Mike Skramstad took the time to photoshop the case on ways I could improve it. My first reaction was nausea and to quite dentistry, but once I could reframe that and understand that he was truly trying to help me improve, it was so much easier to actually see what he was talking about with the photoshopped photos so that the next time I wouldn't make the same mistakes. Now did I cut the crowns off and redo the case? Absolutely not. This patient was thrilled. She could not see the nuances that we can, but what I learned from the feedback was unvaluable to my growth as a dentist. It also became a challenge over the next years to see what cases did or did not need photoshopped .
After case after case after case, I began to actually see the nuances of line angles and color patterns and became much more comfortable with my anterior work as the cases became more repeatable.
Now if a case like this walks in the door, it's not a huge deal to squeeze them in and get a good result for our patients. All of this is because of the constant feedback from this community. It's fun to see how all of us have improved over the last 9 years as technology has changed, materials have changed and how we constantly challenge each other. I wouldn't change my path for anything in the world, but I do hope that it takes others a lot less time than it took me to make restorations look natural ;)