It’s a five minute book review! I used to do those for Teen Librarian at La Crosse, she and I often had pretty different reading preferences and it would give her ideas on books to booktalk that she might not have time to read.

Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way
by Michael Young

I have to admit, one of the reasons I recommended this for purchase was that I was really interested to find out how Young would incorporate Genghis Khan. To burst a few bubbles (including sadly, my own), it’s not quite as targeted on the Mongolian parallels as it is on management of people, business planning, financial planning etc. While this makes for a slightly less blood-thirsty read, it does make for a more practical book and, ultimately, an enjoyable one.

Young offers a no-nonsense look at managing a dental practice, raising questions that young dental students should certainly be addressing in their classes, but are presented here neatly and in a very readable fashion. Have the first year dental students really thought about hiring a practice manager, a receptionist, or making sure they’ve ordered enough supplies? Are they considering that they may need to fire people that they have worked with every day?  Young raises questions like these.

This book was published in the UK and as a result there are things in here that will not apply to dentists in the US. Even so, there’s more that is relevant than not, and it gives the reader a different perspective on how things are handled abroad, hopefully raising questions about American equivalencies.