Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 3

The Business Side of Dentistry: TheClassroomExperience Many dentists are both clinicians and small business owners. The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) is well aware that business and practice management skills are necessary for small business owners in the best of times, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need has only become more pronounced. CDA Essentials sent staff writer Sierra Bellows into the field to learn more about what students are learning in a business program tailored for practising dentists. She attended a few online classes at the UBC Sauder School of Business, which offers a certificate in dental practice management. We wanted to know what issues dentists are talking about, both with professors and with their peers, in the midst of a pandemic that has posed significant operational challenges to dental practices. “The pandemic is an existential threat to dentists as health care providers by creating a seismic change in the external environment. It will create permanent changes in the operational resources required to organize an efficient, effective, patient-centric and profitable dental practice,” says Dr. James Armstrong, CDA president in 2020-21, dentist, and professor. Dr. Armstrong and Anthony Boardman, a professor emeritus in strategy, co-organize the Sauder program. “Dentists need a mini-MBA toolkit to thrive in an uncertain environment ahead.” 36 | 2021 | Issue 3