88 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST TESTIMONIALS There’s power in what you don’t know. And more power than that, in the knowing that you don’t know. It’s a philosophical and clinical insight that established Sydney dentist, Dr Michael Ho, says snuck up on him over decades of dedicated, conservative practice, and in his personal life as well. He calls it the Dunning Kruger Effect – and tells me to look it up. Dr Ho is talking from his airy Lane Cove rooms, reflecting on why he invested in 3D cone beam imaging, given the expense and the overwhelming options for medical tech these days. Later, I search the term and Wikipedia tells me: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people … tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. For Dr Ho, discovering this term and unravelling its impacts was a watershed experience in his life. “As I got older and my career went on, things began to shift. There are certain things, you know, that decline, certain abilities, like prefect eyesight maybe, or absolute confidence, or willingness to push the edges. “We have an above-average city-side suburban practice, I would say, it’s very comfortable, and as I’ve become, over the years, the old guy here, what I focus Light at the edge Thirty four years in prestige general practice, and 3D imaging, have taught Sydney dentist Dr Michael Ho the special value of what he doesn’t know. By Jade Richardson on more now is orthodontics, implants – and knowledge. I mean both kinds: the knowledge that I have, and the knowledge that I know for sure that I do not have access to. These days, I’m glad to say, the mainstay of everything I do is conservative.” The special knowledge he means is beyond the excellence in skills, medicine, science and all the precision that goes with working in one of the most prestigious professions in the world. “It’s the ones among us that are smart enough to know that they don’t know everything who are coming up towards real excellence, these are the ones who will take us into the best future of our work,” he says. I get the sense that Dr Ho has been exploring this tender edge in more ways that just clinically. He has a kind and patient, warm manner. He doesn’t talk about ‘cutting edges’, his conversation tends toward care, clarity, safety, and the total transformation of his approach to practice by 3D imaging. His 4-chair Bupa practice in Lane Cove has in-house xray, using the newgeneration of Vatech’s 3D cone beam imaging systems (PaX-i3D: 3D CBCT + Ceph), with which he recently replaced the older brother of this technology. “Honestly. I just don’t know now how I used to practice without 3D vision.” Dr Ho says with evident enthusiasm. “I really just don’t know how I used to do it.” “Now that I’ve experienced 3D imaging, there’s absolutely no going back. Why? Because it gives us real knowledge where before we had only guesswork. It gives us the ability to actually see. Not to guess, or to hope or to risk it: but to actually, clearly see. This has to be the way, looking forward, for all of dentistry.The difference is likemoving from black and white to large screen home theatre TV. There’s just no comparison. It’s that big a change.” Dr Ho says he chose the Vatech cone beam option because it did everything he wanted it to do. And more! “I owned the previous incarnation, but I did evaluate everybody else before I chose this model. What mattered was the footprint, we only have so much space to deal with and most other options were just Beyond your Expectations, SUPERIOR IMAGE QUALITY
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