The Most Overlooked Strategy for Running a Smoother Practice
Written by Jen Gall, Marketing & People Engagement Director
The Most Overlooked Strategy for Running a Smoother Practice
Because great staffing isn't about reacting faster. It's about needing to react less.
Have you ever noticed how much of practice management is spent reacting? One minute you're looking at the week ahead thinking everything seems under control. The next, a nurse phones in sick, an associate asks if an extra surgery can be opened, annual leave suddenly overlaps, or recruitment takes a little longer than expected. Before the doors have even opened, the day you'd carefully planned already looks completely different. It's just part of the job, and most practice managers become remarkably good at adapting, because quite often they don't have much choice.
We've almost come to accept that this is simply what great practice management looks like. We expect the unexpected, learn to think on our feet, and become experts at rearranging rotas, juggling appointments and finding solutions under pressure. If there's one thing practice managers are good at, it's keeping everything moving even when every part of the day seems to have decided to move at once. But being good at carrying pressure isn't the same thing as needing to carry less of it in the first place.
For years, we've admired practices that can react quickly when something goes wrong. We praise teams for pulling together, managers for somehow making an impossible day work, and clinicians for going the extra mile when the practice is short staffed. Those moments deserve recognition, because they aren't easy. But we may have become so focused on reacting well that we've forgotten to ask a different question. What if the smoothest-running practices aren't the ones that react fastest, but simply the ones that have to react less? It's a small shift in thinking, but it changes the conversation completely.
When most people think about locums, they picture a last-minute phone call. A nurse has called in sick, the diary is full, and somebody needs help. The agency answers the phone, a locum is booked, and the crisis is averted. That's the image most of us have, and there's nothing wrong with it, because those situations happen every single day. Helping practices through those moments is one of the things we're proudest of. But over the years, we've started to wonder whether that's only a fraction of the story.
The practices that seem to run the calmest aren't necessarily the ones that experience fewer staffing challenges. They still have sickness. They still have annual leave. They still recruit, grow, lose team members and deal with all the unpredictability that comes with employing people. The difference is they've stopped seeing support as something that's only needed once everything starts going wrong, and started building it into the way they work long before the pressure begins.
Think about annual leave for a moment. It's hardly ever a surprise. Most holidays are booked months in advance, yet it's remarkable how many practices wait until those weeks arrive before deciding they might need extra support. The same often happens during recruitment. Everyone knows there's a vacancy and everyone knows the team is working harder to cover it, yet because people are coping, it's easy to convince ourselves everything is fine. Coping and thriving are two very different things, and that's probably where locums have been misunderstood. We've become so used to thinking of them as emergency cover that we've overlooked something bigger: they aren't simply there to rescue a difficult day, they can help stop so many of those difficult days happening in the first place.
Imagine knowing your busiest fortnight of the summer is already covered before it begins. Imagine your permanent nurses taking annual leave without worrying about the colleagues they've left behind. Imagine taking your time to recruit the right person because experienced support is already in place. Suddenly you're no longer making decisions because you're under pressure. You're making them because you've created the space to think clearly.
That breathing space has a funny way of spreading through the whole practice. One less person rushing means someone else doesn't have to rush either. The reception team has a little more time with patients. Clinicians aren't trying to work at double speed. Permanent nurses don't feel like they're constantly carrying the extra weight, and practice managers aren't spending every spare minute solving the next staffing problem before the last one has finished. Before long, the whole day starts to feel a little calmer.
The biggest difference might be the hardest one to measure. When permanent nurses know support is available, they stop carrying so much invisible pressure. They can book annual leave without feeling guilty about the colleagues they've left behind. They worry less about calling in sick when they're genuinely unwell, because they know the practice has a plan. They spend less time wondering how the day will cope and more time focusing on the patients in front of them. That's often what good leadership feels like: not dramatic, just quietly supportive.
It's funny really, because when staffing is working well, nobody talks about it. Patients rarely leave saying the staffing levels were excellent. They simply remember that everyone seemed relaxed, they weren't kept waiting too long, and the team looked like they genuinely enjoyed working together. That's the part patients notice, even if they don't realise why. Good staffing is one of those things that's almost invisible when it's done well, but incredibly obvious when it isn't.
Maybe that's why our favourite conversations with practice managers don't start with panic any more. Locums will always be there for the unexpected phone call first thing in the morning, and they'll always matter when life throws something at a practice that nobody could have planned for. But increasingly, those conversations start with, "We've got a busy few weeks coming up," or, "One of our nurses is going on maternity leave later this year." Sometimes it's simply, "We don't want the team becoming overwhelmed." There's no urgency in anybody's voice. Nobody is trying to rescue the day. Instead, they're talking about protecting the standards they've worked hard to build, thinking about their team before the pressure starts to show, and recognising that a great patient experience depends on the people delivering that care having the capacity to do their jobs well.
That's really where the value of planning ahead lies. It isn't about creating the perfect rota or predicting every challenge that might come your way, because that's impossible. Dentistry will always be unpredictable. People will still become ill, emergencies will still happen, diaries will still change. Planning ahead doesn't remove any of that. It simply gives you more options when it happens.
For years, we've judged good staffing by how quickly we can find cover when someone calls in sick. We celebrate rapid responses, same-day solutions and rescuing a difficult rota at the last minute, and those things will always matter. But by the time you're desperately searching for cover, the pressure has usually already arrived.
The practices that consistently feel calm haven't discovered some secret everyone else has missed. More often than not, they're led by people who understand that planning ahead is one of the kindest things you can do for a team. They know that protecting people matters just as much once the diary is busy as it does when things are quiet, which is part of why the diary keeps running smoothly in the first place. Asking for support early is a leadership decision, not a last resort, and it's one that protects morale, safeguards patient experience and creates the consistency every practice is working towards.
That's why proactive staffing might be one of the most overlooked strategies for running a smoother practice. Not because it exists to rescue difficult days, but because when it's part of the plan rather than the panic, it quietly shapes everything else. It protects a team before they become exhausted. It preserves patient experience before standards begin to slip. It gives practice managers the confidence to think ahead instead of constantly firefighting. More than anything, it creates the breathing space that allows good leadership to shine.
Because great staffing isn't about reacting faster. It's about needing to react less.
Written by Jen Gall, Marketing & People Engagement Director at S4S Team
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