Learning with the laboratory.
Most of what a practice can learn from a laboratory happens case by case. Some of it is worth doing deliberately.
Visit the laboratory
Very few dentists have watched a technician build the restorations they prescribe, and almost everyone who does changes how they write prescriptions afterwards.
Seeing a die read under magnification, porcelain built and fired in successive stages, or a framework assessed for support makes the constraints tangible in a way no written explanation achieves. It also makes it obvious why certain information matters and why certain requests are difficult.
For a practice within reach of Burnaby, an hour spent this way is probably the highest-value hour available in the whole laboratory relationship. Call to arrange it.
Bring the team, not just the clinician
Cases are assembled, packed and dispatched by nursing and administrative staff, and queries are received by whoever answers the phone.
A practice where only the dentist understands what the laboratory needs will keep sending incomplete cases, because the person completing the form is working from habit rather than understanding.
Half an hour on what each field of the prescription is for, why the shade guide name matters, and what happens here when something is missing removes a recurring source of friction permanently.
Case-based discussion
The most useful learning is usually about a specific case rather than a topic. Why did this one need adjusting, why did that shade not match, what would have made this implant case proceed without a query.
Those conversations are available on any case and cost a phone call. They are also the fastest route to calibration between a practice and a laboratory, because they are grounded in work both sides can see.
Reviewing a run of cases together — what came back and why — is worth more than any general session.
Use the written material
The Knowledge Centre carries fifty technical articles written for dentists rather than for patients, covering materials, preparation, digital records, implants, laboratory communication and practice efficiency.
They are a reasonable basis for a team meeting or for bringing a new associate up to speed on how the practice works with its laboratory.
The resource library collects the practical guides in one place.
For new associates and graduates
A clinician new to a practice restarts the calibration process — the laboratory does not yet know how they prepare or what they expect.
Telling us when a new clinician joins helps, because a technician who knows a prescriber is new will query a borderline case rather than assume. A short introduction, in person or by phone, shortens the period considerably.
It is also a good moment to hand over the practice's documented preferences so the new clinician inherits them rather than rediscovering them.
What laboratory-supported education usually looks like
Larger Canadian laboratories typically support continuing education in three ways: hosting or sponsoring formal courses with external speakers, providing in-practice sessions for a team, and offering technical study material.
The formal course route tends to concentrate on the areas where laboratory and clinical decisions meet most closely — implant restorative work, aesthetics and smile design, occlusion, and airway and sleep-related dentistry.
The in-practice route is less visible and frequently more useful, because it is about how a particular practice works rather than about a topic in the abstract.
What is available now
Laboratory visits, sessions for a practice team on records and prescriptions, and case-based discussion on any case you send. All three are available on request and cost a phone call.
The Knowledge Centre carries fifty technical articles written for dentists, which work as a basis for a team meeting or for bringing a new associate up to speed.
Formal course programming will be listed in this section as it is confirmed.
Learning from your own remakes
The most useful teaching material available to a practice is its own case history, and almost nobody uses it.
Recording the category of each case that came back or needed substantial adjustment — fit, contacts and occlusion, shade, contour, fracture — makes patterns visible within fifteen or twenty cases, and the pattern usually identifies a specific, fixable cause.
Reviewing that with the laboratory is more valuable than any general session, because it is about your preparations, your records and your patients rather than about restorative dentistry in the abstract.
Arranging something
For laboratory visits, team sessions or a discussion about a particular area of work, call the laboratory during business hours and say what you are trying to achieve.
What is available and in what format is best established directly rather than from a page.
More in Dentist Resources
Send a case
Digital scans and conventional impressions are both accepted. Cases move by UPS and Purolator, and Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada.