Portrait of a Professional orthodontic certifying boards. I am now in the process of organizing this symposium in co-operation with the American Board of Ortho-dontics. Watch the WFO website, www.wfo. org, for updates. This meeting, which will be similar to the symposium held in 2010 (during the 7 th IOC in Sydney, Australia), will feature group discussions throughout the morning of the opening day of the Congress — Sunday, September 27, 2015. In addition to this task, I served as Chair of the WFO Finance Committee in 2011, when we made a major change in our investment strate-gies. Then, with the decision to start a new journal, I chaired that committee for nearly two years. During that time we employed a new editor, Jorge Faber, and negotiated a contract with Elsevier to publish the new online-only Journal of the World Federation of Orthodontists ( JWFO ). As a result, it became possible to pro-vide access to this journal for all 9,000 of our members at no additional cost to each member — a noteworthy benefit. • • • • Will a new technique result in better treatment outcomes? Will the approach shorten treatment time, or reduce discomfort? Will it enhance patient involvement/ cooperation? Will it reduce overall cost to the pa-tient? We have a professional obligation to search for the answers to these concerns and be honest in sharing the answers with our patients. For example, this may mean telling a prospective patient that treating a Class II malocclusion in two phases instead of one may take a little lon-ger and cost more than doing it in one phase. BH: What are the most prominent issues that current orthodontic residents and new orthodontists are facing today? DT: There is no doubt about it: the concerns of a new resident upon graduation are differ-ent now than when I completed school 48 years ago. I was faced with the opportunity to start a private practice in any one of several small communities, which were all in need of an orthodontic specialist. Although I had no savings and few assets with which to support my spouse and one small child, my total school debt was only $15,000. A local bank was eager to loan me all the money I needed to start a practice. Within eight months, I had a waiting list of potential patients and was ready to ex-pand my office; I took on my first partner after seven years of practice. This is not the view for many of our current residents when they graduate. Due to indebtedness, they cannot borrow money to start their own practices, and even if they could, competing for new patients in most cities would markedly slow the growth of any new practice. BH: How do you see orthodontics changing over the next five, 10, and 25 years? DT: I don’t predict the future — not even for the specialty I dearly love. But it seems clear to BH: How have the concerns of orthodontists changed over the last 20 or 25 years? DT: The competition for new patients seems to make the marketing of a practice more impor-tant than in the past. Although marketing in dentistry is nothing new, one does not like to see it erode the quality of dentistry delivered. Commercial interests have also become more intrusive than in the past, and threaten to erode professional values. In my mind, a solid orthodontic education is needed in order for any new graduate to know how to deal with these pressures as they strive to serve their patients’ needs. New methods of correcting malocclusion are certainly welcome if they truly make a difference. High-level studies of all new approaches to tooth movement are needed before we abandon more traditional approaches. It is always important to ask tough questions, such as: F A L L 2 0 1 4 • P C S O B U L L E T I N 29
PCSO Bulletin Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists Bulletin Fall 2014: 29
