Episode 163 - From Passion to Purpose: Dr. Trudy Bowden’s Journey to Mastering Veterinary Dentistry

🔗 Take Your Veterinary Dentistry Skills to the Next Level!
Join the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program for expert training and hands-on learning! https://ivdi.org/inv

Discover Dr. Beckman’s courses and resources to expand your knowledge in veterinary dentistry. https://veterinarydentistry.net/

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Host: Dr. Brett Beckman, DVM, FAVD, DAVDC, DAAPM

In this episode of The Vet Dental Show, Dr. Brett Beckman sits down with Dr. Trudy Bowden, a proud graduate of the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program, to discuss her inspiring journey in veterinary dentistry. From early career challenges to mastering advanced dental techniques, Dr. Bowden shares her transformation and how she overcame obstacles to become a leader in the field.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ How attending a single seminar reignited Dr. Bowden’s passion for dentistry
✅ The critical role of full-mouth dental radiographs in diagnosing hidden pathology
✅ Overcoming challenges as a veterinarian, mother, and dentistry advocate
✅ Why having a designated dentistry leader in a practice is essential for success
✅ The power of mentorship, training, and persistence in advancing your career
✅ How Dr. Bowden transitioned from a small practice lead to teaching veterinary dentistry

Key Takeaways:
✔️ Investing in dental radiography can significantly improve patient outcomes
✔️ A structured mentorship program accelerates learning and confidence
✔️ Balancing professional and personal life is challenging but achievable
✔️ Taking action on your passion can lead to a fulfilling career shift
✔️ Veterinary dentistry is a rewarding field that enhances both patient care and practice revenue

Links & Resources for Veterinary Professionals:
🔗 Apply to the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program - https://ivdi.org/inv
🔗 Explore Dr. Beckman’s courses and resources - https://veterinarydentistry.net/

📩 Have questions or comments? Let us know below! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more valuable veterinary dentistry content. 🦷🐶🐱

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi, and welcome to the Vet Dental Show.
I'm Brett Beckman.
I'm a board certified veterinarydentist, and we bring this
show to you every Wednesday.
The General Practitioner.
And the technician to help you andyour dentistry team become even
better at veterinary dentistry.
And today we are so pleased andhonored to have Trudy Bowden with us.

(00:25):
She is a longtime friend and colleagueand also a veterinary dental practitioner.
Welcome, Trudy.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
I'm gonna just ask you to introduceyourself to our audience and just give
a little backstory, if you will whereyou are and a little bit about yourself.

(00:46):
Sure.
So I graduated from NC State in 1999.
I worked for a decade in Cary NorthCarolina, and then my husband and I
moved to Oxford, a little rural townabout an hour north of that, where I
took a year off, and then joined thepractice where I started my dental

(01:07):
journey, and the rest is sort of history.
So I write, I took some notes,just to keep me honest on my
timeline, I took a seminar End ofAudio from you in 2014 in Raleigh.
It was an all day seminar.
I think it was the Secrets of DentalSuccess or something like that.
And that really sparked re sparkedan interest in dentistry for me

(01:31):
that I had in my early career.
And then I joined the veterinary dentalelite group that you started in 2015.
And that's when we began ourjourney expanding the dental
service at my practice.
And tell me, and the audience, howmany children did you have at the

(01:53):
time and how many do you have now?
Three!
I had three then, I have three now.
At that time, I had a teenager,a toddler, and a newborn.
Despite all those odds againstyou, you've done very well.
Yes,
so Let's dive into that a little bit.
And because when you started offinitially, you were obviously you were

(02:15):
just taking a course or probably notfeeling super confident coming out of
that course and then going into practice.
And so tell it, tell us thatprogression, that story.
Sure.
So I joined the Dental Elite, whichwas the group that you had that met
monthly to discuss cases and justa foundational mentorship program.

(02:39):
And I began just a concertedfocus on dentistry in my
practice, where we, it was just.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
We started looking at what ourrevenue was for dentistry and what
we weren't doing, most importantly.
I think I came away from that initialseminar with you with just a sense of,

(03:01):
once you're better, you want to do better.
And we were not doing dentalradiographs at that time.
And I started to do moresurgical extractions.
And just that focus on doing bettertechnique increased our revenue
to the point I was able to get theear of management and my practice

(03:24):
owner to move forward getting dentalx rays in our practice in 2015.
And that was just such an eye opener.
We knew we were missingpathology, we just didn't know.
how much we were missing.
In fact, if I can share my screen,I wanted to show you a picture
of our very first patient thatwe used our dental x rays on.

(03:48):
And this was a slam dunk that goteverybody really excited about doing
dentistry in this small rural practice.
For those of you who are notwatching on YouTube, let me
describe this lesion that Dr.
Trudy is about to talk about.
And we've got the left mandibularfirst molar that's got bone loss all
the way from the frication, mesialand distal on the mesial root.

(04:12):
All the way around that route.
So there's a big black holearound the whole route extending
almost to the ventral cortex.
And that's all from periodontal disease,although grossly as she'll describe.
She didn't see much fromthe standpoint of pathology.
And then on the distalroute, we have a much less.
involved lesion with the periapicalleucency around the distal root.

(04:36):
So this was Cupcake.
She was a six year old toy poodlethat the owner had just noticed
a little bit of foul breath.
And we told her we were very excited tohave a new diagnostic tool in the hospital
and asked her if she'd be willing tolet us do full mouth x rays on her dog
in conjunction with a dental assessmentand she heartily agreed and We were just

(05:01):
stem founded at the pathology presentin a relatively normal looking mouth
that is a dark photo, but she only had alittle focal area of gingival recession.
And everyone was literally an audiblegasp from the entire team was outside the

(05:21):
room waiting for us to develop the x-rays.
And this is why we do what we do.
So that was a nice opportunity for usto get everyone excited about dentistry.
And we instituted full mouthx rays, non optional, in 2016.
And at the end of 2017, we had Increasedour revenue by fivefold, and that's not

(05:44):
the most important thing, but it justunderscores how much pathology we're
going to find if we're doing a fullmouth assessment with dental radiographs.
We paid for equipment in less than a year,and it's just been the most rewarding
thing I've ever done in my career.

(06:06):
The process between 2015 and 2018involved taking all of your courses.
The Canine Weekend, the Feline Weekend,and the Advanced Surgery Weekend.
And it has just been acontinued process of learning.
You are definitely to be commended foreverything that you've done, especially

(06:29):
with three children and all theprofessional obligations that you had.
And obviously, that journey was notalways without some type of challenges.
Oh, no doubt.
I don't know if you have anyspecifically that come to mind
that you would want to share thatmight be able to help the audience.

(06:50):
There were probably two differentcategories of challenges.
One you mentioned was just lifebalance, trying to maintain a home
and parent children and have a fulltime job and also trying to grow
professionally into a new area.
With the need being the primaryperson in my practice, I didn't
have a mentor to train me on site.

(07:14):
So the mastermind group wasessential foundation for go to help.
So lifestyle balances were certainlya challenge and then just running
into tough cases, not knowing howto handle a particular complication,
how to recover a route that hasbeen broken off in the process.

(07:36):
And those days were sometimes fraught withfrustration and am I cut out for this?
Should I really be doing this?
Am I good enough to do this?
Thankfully, with good support inmy family and good support from
my employer and from your team assoldier on, get her done, so to speak.
The biggest challenge Ithink I ran into was in 2020.

(07:58):
COVID was around the corner.
Or no, that was I had a healthscare in the fall of 2020 and just
really restructured and reprioritizemy whole life and fell back on
an episode that we've talkedabout before the morning routine.

(08:20):
How important that is to bea foundation for success.
And I charted a course to finish theprogram in six months and was grateful
to meet that goal in May of 2021.
Oh, that was an amazing story andprogression of overcoming challenges.

(08:43):
And there are numerous people that arelistening that have taken that same path.
And you have taken the stepsto take action to make sure
that you were successful.
And I encourage everyone listening that'sgoing through those same challenges to

(09:05):
look at Trudy as an example of someonewho doesn't quit despite any odds
and will power through, find answersto the challenges, and meet those
challenges no matter what it takes.
And in order to be successful indentistry or be successful in anything

(09:26):
in life, That's the way that the peoplethat are successful, that are like
Trudy, that's the path that they take.
And let that be encouragement to everyone.
And allow you to draw on that,draw on stories like Trudy's.
And think, hey, we're not alone.

(09:47):
Trudy went through that.
I personally went through a lotof personal challenges in my life.
I won't bore you with the details, we'llsave that maybe for another podcast, but
the embracing of routines and applyingthings that you learn that help you invest

(10:09):
in your learning, invest in your personaldevelopment, aside from dentistry,
aside from anything you're doing inyour practice is super invaluable.
So we really appreciate youbeing a role model for that.
Oh, thank you.
It feels like a very basic, nonexciting story from my perspective,
but there have been many mentors alongthe way that you included, Dr. Reed,

(10:34):
that have made this journey possible.
I don't know where I read it orsaw it, but a question that really
resonated with me when I started alaser focus on this dream was what
would you do if you weren't afraid?
And I had an immediate answer.

(10:55):
I want to do dentistry full time and Iwasn't even sure that road even existed.
So it's there.
That is that just there's so many goodthings that we can draw out of that.
And if I look at that, and I lookat your progression, the thing that

(11:15):
jumps out at me is that you have.
a pat or you had and have a passion fordentistry and a passion to help your
patients using dentistry as that medium.
And it possibly has become andI'd like you to answer this.

(11:39):
Your purpose.
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
I love client education.
In fact, I still have to get pulledout of the room during consults
because it's just something I couldtalk about for hours and hours.
The return on that investmentprofessionally, personally
is just without compare.

(11:59):
And I feel truly blessed.
I'm probably going to botch thisquote up a bit, but it's so helpful.
Mark Twain said that there are two daysthat are the most important in your life.
The first is when you were born andthe second is when you find out why.
You took that passion for dentistryand then you gave it legs.

(12:22):
You took action and you made it apurpose and consequently that's part
of the reason why you're so successful.
Today, and part of the reason whyyou're making such a huge impact on
your patients and the clients andcertainly your practice and remind
me you are You're in charge of thedentistry service at the practice.

(12:47):
Now, you guys just got into a newfacility Tell me what the practice
dynamics are like right now from adentistry standpoint where you're at
Oh so probably a point for clarification.
So it in my former practice Iwas the lead on our dental team.
It was myself a technician that Itook under my wing and we were the.

(13:13):
The go to people for consultationswith clients talking about the need
for dentistry, the need for x rays.
And that was where I was when I completedthe V. D. P. program and I sent a thank
you letter to another one of my mentorsfor helping me achieve that goal.

(13:35):
And it turns out that he was building.
An expansion of his dentistry practice.
So I'm actually in adifferent hospital now.
So I'm not the lead.
I'm I've gone from being the top guyat a small hospital to a small guy
and a little in a big hospital withDr. Don Hoover is my senior clinician.

(13:59):
I'm back in a role as a student.
I'm incredibly honored to be here.
It's yeah, I'm still learning every singleday we teach we have 11 veterinarians
every other month that come in for anall day surgical extractions lamb that
we teach and that is humbling, butalso nice to see how far you've come.

(14:22):
Wow.
I remember when I was in that seatand when I was struggling making
that flap or pulling that tooth and.
So it's, it has come full circle which Ididn't think I would enjoy teaching but
I have really enjoyed that aspect of itand I continue to learn even in that role.
Amazing journey, and I want toback up a little bit because this

(14:44):
becomes important to the structureof practices that are not quite where
you are yet, but are getting there.
And one of the things that I rememberthat I pulled out several years ago
from with your progression was the factthat with any dentistry consultation

(15:07):
within the practice, they would callyou in as the person that did dentistry.
And that I think that is a huge thingfor practices in general, especially
multi doctor practices to have oneperson, the person who's most talented,

(15:30):
the person that's got the most passion,to be that go to person that literally
comes in as the local, not takingspecialists out of context, obviously,
but you are, you're the in houseperson You're the go to person for
dentistry who has the most knowledge.

(15:51):
I would rather you talk to Dr.Bowden about this because she can
put a different twist on it and giveyou more information than I can.
And that's something that I wouldstrongly suggest that our listeners
take to heart and certainly not all ofour listeners are the decision maker
in the practice, but if you're that, ifyou're that person, if you're the most.

(16:17):
talented in dentistry and have the mostpassion for dentistry in your practice,
you probably should be the only onedoing dentistry in that practice.
Absolutely.
I hope you enjoyed that episode.
If you'd like more informationabout the Veterinary Dental
Practitioners Program, please submitto request an invitation at ivdi.

(16:43):
org slash inv.