Dental News - Eleven tips for success in your dental clinic Part II: CAPS & CLIMB

Eleven tips for success in your dental clinic Part II: CAPS & CLIMB

Dr Anna Maria Yiannikos

Tue. 14. February 2017

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Today, I will share with you the knowledge I have gained within the past 25 years of managing and evolving my clinic so you can always be one step ahead and avoid mistakes I have made in the past. The third very important tip that I am going to share with you today in order to be and remain successful at your clinics is how to regain your power.

We learn a lot of things during our studies in the dental schools. We learn how to make the best fillings with great contours and biocompatible materials; how to treat a tooth that needs a root canal therapy, but do we really learn anything on how to find the best employee that will make our life and daily routine easier?

Firstly we should make a job analysis by listing the CAPS of the candidate. If we do not take the time to complete this process, we will not know from the beginning exactly what we are looking at and by this we will increase the risk of making the wrong choice.
If, for example, we go to the supermarket without our shopping list, what will we end up doing? We will most probably buy unnecessary things or even forget the things that we went in the beginning there for. My point here is that when we decide that we need to hire an employee we should know upfront what we are looking for, otherwise we might make mistakes that will cost us money and time!

Let’s have a look now what does CAPS stand for:
– Capacities: The mental and physical abilities required to do the job. How smart and how strong (physically capable) must the successful applicant be?
– Attitudes: such as customer service, orientation, team player, reliability, honesty, willingness to follow rules, problem-solving, loyalty, safety-consciousness, ability to follow through—Imagine having a receptionist who, although she is doing the job without a mistake, complains about everything all the time. Is that a person that you would love to have as part of your team?
– Personality: traits such as competitiveness, assertiveness, attention to detail and sociability—Also search whether the person will manage his or her personality to get the job done, since as social scientists declare about 60 per cent of our personality traits are inherited and most of them are set by age nine. In other words: personality can’t be taught and it doesn’t change much over time.
– Skills: Expertise required to do the job—Skills are the easiest job requirements to identify. We could do that by asking the candidate to perform certain tests. For example, if we are trying to find a receptionist we could ask her to translate an article, or through role playing to check how she responds in certain scenarios.

Have always in mind the quote ‘we hire them for the skills but we fire them for their attitudes’!

So finally we found our A-star employees and now what do we have to do in order to keep them?
The fourth very essential tip of today’s article that I would love to share with you is the different ways that we can use to retain our A-star employees.

Apply CLIMB to retain your team!

Now let’s explain a little what does exactly the acronym CLIMB stands for:
– Challenge: Studies have shown that the main reason that our employees resign is that they are dissatisfied with their tasks. That’s why we should give them challenging duties to accomplish. And what will the result be? They will feel useful and they will find it difficult to leave from a job that offers them different and unique experiences.
– Loyalty: Be human with your employees and do not be afraid that you will lose your power. Show interest in their problems and lay back in times that they cannot handle any more pressure.
– Investment: Invest time and money to them so they will feel appreciated. During my lectures I get regularly the question that we reward them by giving them bonus and still they are not motivated enough, what shall we do? My answer here is that you must renew your reward system regularly.

Sometimes you can give them cash (as bonuses) or maybe you can offer them other kind of incentives, like buying them a free trip for vacation on Christmas, for example. Research has proven that the more powerful and effective incentives are the ones that are specific, tangible and non-cash.

Also please remember to ‘Reward not the best in sales but the best’ A major mistake that we usually do is to only reward the ones that bring money to our clinics. Instead we should reward the best in our practices, the ones that are completing their tasks in excellence unconditionally to what this task is.
– Measurement: Conduct a fair performance appraisal every six months.
– Building: Demonstrate your commitment to them by showing them opportunities of career development.

During the next issue we will analyse two new tips that will reveal new opportunities and potential of our dental clinics. Till then, remember that not only are you the dentist in your clinic, but you are also the manager and the leader.

You can always send me your questions and request for more information and guidance at:
dba@yiannikosdental.com or via our Facebook account.

Looking forward to our next trip of business growth and educational development!

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BRISTOL, England: People who have completed treatment for head and neck cancer may require long-term dental maintenance and preventive care. In South West England, however, this need coincides with persistent difficulties in accessing National Health Service (NHS) primary dental care, leaving some patients without a clear path to routine dental support after hospital-based treatment. The Cancer Action Support Practice (CASP) pathway has been developed to address this long-standing gap.

Acting as a vital clinical safety net, this newly structured framework bridges the historic operational gap between secondary hospital settings and general dental practices. It is intended to ensure that vulnerable individuals who have completed oncology treatment can transition more safely to routine and preventive dentistry within local primary care networks.

The steadily rising incidence of head and neck cancer across the UK presents immense long-term healthcare challenges for the NHS. Treatment involving complex surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy can result in significant oral and functional complications, including xerostomia, trismus and osteoradionecrosis, adding to the importance of accessible maintenance and preventive care in primary dental practice.

Adult NHS dental access in South West England has been reported to be below the average for England, leaving many patients with substantial post-treatment oral healthcare needs without primary care dental access. In response, an NHS regional restorative dentistry advisory network in South West England joined forces with the regional chief dental office and restorative dentistry specialists involved in head and neck cancer care to engineer the CASP pathway. Input from primary care dentists and local NHS bodies responsible for planning and funding dental services helped refine the clinical pathway by streamlining administrative triage workloads and establishing transparent referral criteria.

Crucially, CASP does not manage prehabilitation—that is, specialist-led dental assessment and planning before cancer treatment. Instead, it focuses on stabilising oral disease before rehabilitation can proceed and preserving long-term health once complex hospital-based oral rehabilitation has been completed.

The funding offers local NHS bodies flexibility: they can support participating practices either through existing NHS dental contracts or by paying them for dedicated CASP sessions. A pilot programme launched in Cornwall under the dedicated-session option is actively collecting data on patient numbers, treatment complexity and costs to refine future rollouts.

Consultant-led peer review is embedded in the CASP model and provides ongoing specialist support, training and quality assurance for participating primary care dental teams. In this way, this integrated pathway provides a scalable, sustainable solution for improving access to dental care for patients with substantial oral healthcare needs after head and neck cancer treatment.

The need for structured post-treatment dental pathways is increasingly recognised across England. A recent study reported on the introduction and ongoing operation of a care network in West Yorkshire designed to overcome persistent barriers to routine dental care for head and neck cancer patients through coordinated collaboration between hospital specialists and primary care dental teams. The West Yorkshire model and the CASP pathway highlight a broader movement towards coordinated post-treatment oral healthcare.

The article, titled “Improving dental care access for head and neck cancer patients in primary care: Developing the Cancer Action Support Practice pathway in South West England”, was published on 22 May 2026 in the British Dental Journal.