A Family Affair
Working Together in a Dental Practice
By Stephanie Green
Featured in AGD Impact, December 2008

Posted on Thursday, December 04, 2008

It’s common for married couples and families to do certain things together—share meals, go shopping (perhaps with different levels of enthusiasm), and enjoy recreational and cultural activities. But some couples and families choose to combine their personal and professional lives, too.

Laura Scott, DMD, and Adam Scott, DMD, of Evans, Ga., are one husband-and-wife team who have made running their dental practice a family affair. “We both grew up watching our parents work very closely together,” says Dr. Laura Scott. “Our parents were farmers and they worked together as a team. As a result, we’ve always thought that it was normal for families to work together.”

For more than 25 years, Midge Carstensen, RDH, has worked alongside her husband Steve Carstensen, DDS, FAGD, in their practice near Seattle. As she notes, “People ask us all the time, ‘Oh, my goodness, how can you work together all day and then go home and spend the evening together, too? What do you talk about—teeth?’”

“Actually, we usually don’t talk about the office when we get home,” Dr. Carstensen says, “unless there’s something that really needs to be discussed.”

Yet the decision to practice dentistry with a spouse or family member requires a good deal of conversation on a number of topics—including how the partnership will affect your professional and personal relationships.

Keeping it in the family

“When you’re starting a practice, you can’t afford to have many people working with you,” says Dr. Carstensen. For the Carstensens, this made the decision to work together an easy one. The couple has worked together successfully for more than two decades.

The decision to work together may be guided by financial reasons, as well as familial ones. The Scotts say that having a growing family and the opportunity to spend more time as a family influenced their decision to work together.

For Cheryl DeWood, DDS, MS, and her husband, Gary DeWood, DDS, working together in business allowed them to raise their family as they wanted. “When our kids were young,” Dr. Gary DeWood says, “we were able to split our time at the office. One of us was always able to be home with the kids.”

While some may wonder why a couple would want to work together, many of those who already do can’t fathom working in any other way. “It’s good in dentistry to be able to have someone in the office with you, another doctor with whom you can confer,” says Dr. Adam Scott. “The way I look at it, who could you trust more than your wife or a family member?”

Kara Griffin-Moore, DMD, agrees wholeheartedly that working with a dentist whom you trust enriches both the partnership and practice. For Dr. Griffin-Moore, that partner just happens to be her father, Thomas Griffin, DMD. The two practice in Gray, Ga.

“It’s like having a dental handbook right next to you,” Dr. Griffin-Moore says of her father’s professional presence. “Any question that I have, he has an answer to it, because there are very few things he hasn’t seen.”

Working with a family member can bring people together professionally as well as personally. Dr. Griffin recalls his daughter’s first day at the office and remembers the pride he felt both as a colleague and a father. “The first day, she jumped on a really tough extraction,” he says. “I remembered the feeling of being new and facing similar challenges. Being able to see her work through it was a special moment.”

For 17 years, the DeWoods have shared a practice in Pemberville, Ohio. “It was really nice to have someone day-in and day-out with whom you could brag about your work, without it really being bragging,” Dr. Cheryl DeWood says. “It was always safe to share both the good things and the bad things.” In addition to the emotional support, she notes, the DeWoods enjoy each other’s professional support as well. “We both looked for ways to further each other’s careers,” she says.

“It’s a sense of accomplishment that you achieve together,” says Dr. Carstensen. “We know other couples in which one spouse isn’t involved with the practice and we’ll ask, ‘How are things going?’ and he or she will respond, ‘I don’t know, that’s his thing,’ or ‘That’s her thing.’”

Dr. Adam Scott agrees. “My wife and I discuss everything related to the practice and make joint decisions. It’s not her practice or mine—it’s ours. Everything we have is ours.”

“Knowing what the other person goes through during the day can be very insightful,” says Midge Carstensen. “By working together, I was able to watch Steve interact with patients or other employees, and he could do the same for me. We were able to give one another good advice.”

“When we sit down with our financial advisor to see what we’ve accomplished over the years, it’s not something that I’ve done on my own,” says Dr. Carstensen. “It’s something that we’ve created together.”

Making it work

Of course, working together isn’t perfect all of the time, and working with family members can pose many challenges; hurt feelings and arguments sometimes can and will spill over into your home life. “Things can go wrong,” says Dr. Laura Scott, “and it can be easy to point fingers. That’s when you have to remember that you’re in it together.”

“You must have respect for each other,” Midge Carstensen says. “Sometimes, you really have to agree to disagree.”

Dr. Carstensen believes that any couple or family practicing together must “set a culture in which everyone in the office is working on an agreed-upon vision, goals, and outcome. That’s the key. If you can set up that kind of a culture, it allows the entire staff—including family members—to work with full authority to achieve what everyone has agreed upon.”

Taking the simple but important steps to identify each person’s role will curtail the risk of overstepping boundaries and will help to preserve both personal and professional relationships. Dr. Griffin-Moore admits that her father has decades more experience than she does; nonetheless, “It’s a true partnership—one in which we just get along really well,” she says. “It’s about two colleagues working together. He treats me as an equal, because I am a partner.”

Midge Carstensen recalls a time at the beginning of the Carstensens’ practice together when she truly had to evaluate whether working together was best for their practice and her career. “For me, working together was actually hard in the beginning. It had nothing to do with my husband. I just didn’t want to be ‘the wife in the office,’ because that can carry such a negative stereotype.”

Eventually, she notes, “I decided that if we were going to do this, I had to, in a way, ‘divorce’ myself from Steve at the office. Now, when we’re at the office, I’m recognized as a member of the staff and not his wife. I’ve taken myself out of the picture emotionally. I’ve learned how to do that.”

As with other partnerships, family members who work together always should have a plan for how to proceed if the partnership does not work out. “You should consider your options together,” says Dr. Carstensen. “Have a Plan B in case you decide working as a team isn’t what’s best for your family.”

“Remember,” says Dr. Adam Scott, “when all is said and done, the number one priority isn’t your practice, it’s your family.”

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