{"id":2449,"date":"2019-05-31T08:20:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T12:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=2449"},"modified":"2019-05-30T10:47:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T14:47:02","slug":"class-of-2019-three-simple-rules-from-dental-alumnus-mark-t-murphy-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2019\/05\/31\/class-of-2019-three-simple-rules-from-dental-alumnus-mark-t-murphy-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Class of 2019: Three simple rules from dental alumnus Mark T. Murphy ’81"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Mark T. Murphy, DDS ’81, addresses the Detroit Mercy Dental Class of 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are reprinting portions of the commencement speeches given at Detroit Mercy commencement ceremonies within the last weeks. <\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s speech is by\u00a0Mark T. Murphy, D.D.S. \u201981, who spoke to the graduating class of Detroit Mercy Dental. Murphy has practiced in the Rochester, Mich., area for more than 35 years. He is the lead faculty member for Clinical Education at ProSomnus Sleep Technologies, Principal of Funktional Sleep, serves as a guest lecturer at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry and is a regular presenter at the Pankey Institute. He is also a well-known international lecturer on leadership, practice management and communication.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to give you three simple rules and then a way to measure your success going forward.<\/p>\n

Do the right thing. Do your best. Treat other people the way you want to be treated.<\/p>\n

Not earth-shattering stuff, is it?<\/p>\n

You are going to be faced at times when you\u2019re challenged in dentistry to do your best and you\u2019re going to be asked to do less, you\u2019re going to be pressured to do less. You\u2019re going to be influenced to lean in a different direction and I say to you, you will be more successful when you look inside to your own moral compass and you do the right thing.<\/p>\n

Do your best: Dentistry is hard and you\u2019re not always going to have a successful outcome, but if you\u2019re doing your best you can walk home and say, \u201cI served my patient well that day.”<\/p>\n

Treating other people the way you want to be treated, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a difficult concept. \u2026 What would you do if that was your brother in the chair? What would you do if that was your sister? How would you treat that patient if that was your mother, your aunt, your uncle, your grandfather? \u2026<\/p>\n

If you follow those three rules you are going to be a successful hygienist, you\u2019ll be a successful dentist, you will be a successful person, because those two things will become somewhat inseparable.<\/p>\n

How do you measure your success? Well, I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s an easy question to answer because success is one of those amorphous things, like Jell-O, it\u2019s hard to grab. Success can be measured in so many different ways. I would not begin to pretend to be the right person to measure what success is or what success isn\u2019t for you. But I will tell you this: In dentistry \u2026 you can measure success by watching a patient\u2019s journey with you.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m going to describe something to you something that I hope you take away with you and remember the rest of your careers that I stole from Mass \u2026 about six months ago. \u2026 As (Father Mike) was eloquently talking about a person\u2019s faith journey, I was thinking to myself, that\u2019s no different than a patient\u2019s journey. \u2026 We talk to our patients about the why we are going to do some dentistry. We talk about the ramifications, the what ifs, the consequences. We reach into their heads and we talk to them about the logical interpretation of action or inaction. But they don\u2019t select us, they don\u2019t select our treatment until we travel 18 inches from their head to their heart. Isn\u2019t that where it happens? When your patient comes to know how much you care, when that patient comes to trust you with your care. \u2026 That\u2019s how we can start to measure our success.<\/p>\n

Watch the rest of that patient\u2019s journey in Murphy\u2019s full speech here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are reprinting portions of the commencement speeches given at Detroit Mercy commencement ceremonies within the last weeks. Today\u2019s speech is by\u00a0Mark T. Murphy, D.D.S. \u201981, who spoke to the graduating class of Detroit Mercy Dental. Murphy has practiced in the Rochester, Mich., area for more than 35 years. He …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6,30],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2019\/05\/PHM_0365.jpg?fit=600%2C315&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Kcng-Dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}