Guiding Next Steps in Dental Education and Leadership
About Kelly G. Tanner, Ph.D.,RDH
Dr. Tanner is a renowned leader at the forefront of reshaping dental care, helping teams and individuals achieve professional fulfillment. With a Ph.D. in Business and Leadership, Dr. Tanner uses her skills to train teams in a group practice setting. Kelly’s Ph.D. focused on organizational metacognition, an in-depth study of group dynamics, and how to elicit permanent personal and organizational change management.
Through measured assessments and interaction, she helps create sustainable systems for personal and professional productivity and accountability. Her ability to motivate the team to take ownership of case acceptance builds trust and strengthens the relationship with patients and the dental team.
Additionally, Dr. Tanner has served in areas of dentistry including academia, corporate, clinical, entrepreneurship, and research. She has been recognized for her outstanding leadership within health care and university settings. She has also been included as a top consultant in Dentistry Today for four years in a row.
Dr. Tanner offers customizable courses in the areas of clinical concepts, leadership, and team empowerment courses.
Courses Offered
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This comprehensive and immersive course is designed specifically for dental hygienists seeking to improve their self-leadership, expand their knowledge, enhance their skills, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving field of dental hygiene. This course will cover a wide range of essential topics, ensuring you have a well-rounded and advanced understanding of dental hygiene principles and up-to-date practices. Through engaging discussion, hands-on experience, and demonstration of cutting-edge technology, this course will empower you with the expertise and confidence to take your care to the next level.
Topics Included in This Course:
*Self-Leadership
*Understanding Your Bias
*Infection Control Protocols
*Evaluating Your Patient’s Oral and Systemic Risk Factors
*Occlusal Dysfunction
*Periodontal Treatment, Diagnosis, and Management
*Dental Implants
*Caries Management
*3D Scanning
*AI in Dentistry
* Ethical Decision Making and Cultural Competency
Program: 3-6 hours: Workshop and Lecture *Team training available. Program topics will vary based on the time allotment.
An abbreviated course (Hygiene Essentials) is also available for 2-3 hours and as a 1.5-2 day program.
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This immersive course is designed specifically for dental hygienists seeking to expand their knowledge, enhance their skills, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving field of dental hygiene. This course will cover a range of essential topics, ensuring you have a well-rounded understanding of dental hygiene principles and up-to-date practices. Through a combination of engaging discussion, hands-on experience, and demonstration of cutting-edge technology, this course will empower you with the expertise and confidence to take your care to the next level.
Periodontal Treatment, Diagnosis, and Management
*Simplifying AAP Staging and Grading
*Understand protocols for treating and managing periodontal disease.
*Discuss the effects of vaping and marijuana.
*Gain confidence in coding for periodontal care.
Occlusal Dysfunction as a Risk Factor for Tooth Loss
*Understand what recession and loss of enamel tell us about the patient.
*Appreciate how occlusion is related to dental and overall health.
*Discuss how to educate, treatment plan, and support patients with malocclusion or misalignment.
Caring for Dental Implants
*Protocols and products for assessment and care of dental implants
*Discuss how to educate, treatment plan, and support patients who could benefit from dental implants
*Home care maintenance for patients with implant
Caries Management
*Assessing caries risk with patients
*Updated technology and products in caries management
Program: 2-3 Hours Workshop and Lecture *Team training available
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This course goes beyond simply looking at KPIs: It helps cultivate a dynamic environment that reflects your professional ethos and enhances patient care. This course explores key areas such as personal leadership, team dynamics, and patient experience and how to develop a confident, proactive approach to your care while fostering collaboration and efficiency within your dental team. The course emphasizes implementing strategies for continuous skill enhancement and innovation and leveraging your skills to unlock new professional potential.
Learning Objectives:
* Develop a mindset that continuously improves, adapts, and innovates in response to your environment.
* Understand how working as a true provider maximizes your scope of practice.
* Examine business, leadership, and communication skills that are important when owning your operator.
** Program 2-3 hours. This course is designed for dental hygienists but can be adapted to dental teams.
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In an environment where COVID and social conflict affect our daily lives, we may feel unable to find our ground inside and outside the workplace. As healthcare providers, all social and emotional awareness aspects are integral for career success, clinical efficacy, and self-fulfillment. This course will help you understand the importance of emotional intelligence as a dental professional, understand how to identify blind spots, and help understand how to rewrite feelings and reverse triggers, which will increase your impact both personally and professionally.
Learning Objectives:
*Understand the importance of emotional intelligence to dental teams and connecting with patients.
*Recognize triggers, reactions, and emotions and trace them all to their source.
*Utilize emotional intelligence to redefine goals and create career fulfillment.
Program: 1-2 hours
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Turnover, stress, and people problems are not new to the dental industry. Staffing is the #1 challenge faced by practices, and turnover creates significant changes in motivated, stable team dynamics. It has become more critical than ever to focus on attracting and retaining the best team and leveraging technology to communicate and retain patients. High-performance teams move differently. The team is cohesive, works in unison, and adapts to the day quickly and efficiently. What sets them apart? Mindset, habits, personality, and communication. Join Dr. Tanner to uncover valuable insights about your team and maximize your potential to solve some of your most challenging problems.
Learning Objectives
*Understand the habits and mindset that can help you and your team achieve long-term success and well-being no matter where you are in your career.
*Discover insights into personalities, triggers, and effective communication.
*Learn how to leverage technology to attract and retain your team and communicate and retain patients.
*Apply real-world, daily practices and strategies to elevate and unite your team to greater success.
*Acquire the skillset to apply these principles indefinitely to keep your team and patients motivated, happy, and fulfilled.
Program length: 2-3 hours
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Take back control of your time and maximize patient care with streamlined digital scanning processes! Join Dr. Kelly Tanner in discovering how to seamlessly incorporate health scans into preventive appointments - even when you don't think it's possible. Learn proven strategies, get the tools needed for successful implementation, and save precious minutes while delivering better quality service than ever before.
Learning objectives:
*Establish protocols that set you up for success to scan in your practice.
*Optimize your time, when and how to scan and improve your workflow.
*Confidently provide handoffs to every member of the dental team.
*Confidently communicate the results of the health scan to educate patients.
Program: 1-2 hours
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What is the occlusion on the right? How about the left? What does this mean for your patient’s oral health? Malocclusion or misalignment can lead to oral maladies that increase the risk of tooth loss and periodontal disease. Malocclusion may also be a marker for airway issues, TMJ disorders, and migraines, significantly impacting the patient's overall health. Receding gums and tooth wear isn't something we should dismiss as "normal". Taking the time to research these conditions can help us identify factors leading to long-term damage, so our patients enjoy a lifetime of healthy smiles - saving them from painful procedures or high costs down the line.
Learning Objectives:
*Understand what recession and loss of enamel tell us about the patient
*Appreciate how occlusion is related to dental and overall health
*Discuss how to educate, treatment plan, and support patients with malocclusion or misalignment
Program: 1-2 hours
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Dental implants require specialized care, but do you have a WHY and HOW behind your workflow? This course will provide insight into creating a diagnostic and maintenance workflow, utilizing the latest technology and homecare recommendations to set your patients up for a lifetime of success.
Learning Objectives:
*Differentiate between a healthy, inflamed, and diseased implant.
*Understand the technology and techniques available for implant maintenance.
*Understand when and where specific technology is indicated on implants based on periodontal condition and type of implant.
*Apply knowledge of what tools to recommend to patients for homecare around implants.
Program: 1-3 hours:
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We are typically advised to go with our gut and trust our intuition. However, going with our gut and doing what feels most comfortable can lead to devastating results in our relationships. Our autopilot of comfort is adapted from ancestral fight or flight. Yet, our world is speeding up with technological advances, team shortages, and turnover, and how we all understand and process information intensifies and affects how we communicate and solve problems. To solve our mental blindspots, we must debias our thoughts to improve our relationships.
Learning Objectives:
* Identify where judgment errors may be playing a role in our relationships.
*How cognitive bias hindered us in the past is hindering us now and may hinder us in the future.
*Develop a specific plan to address your cognitive bias.
Program: 1-2 hours
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Gingival recession is a prevalent condition with complex etiologies, often requiring interdisciplinary consideration. This course provides a review of the biological and mechanical factors contributing to recession, including anatomical vulnerabilities, periodontal phenotype, and iatrogenic influences. Emphasis is placed on the application and interpretation of Cairo classification systems as a tool for diagnosis and treatment planning. Clinical decision-making protocols will be discussed to guide when to monitor, intervene non-surgically, or refer for surgical management.
Learning Objectives:Analyze the multifactorial etiopathogenesis of gingival recession.
Differentiate between classification systems and apply them to clinical case assessment.
Evaluate indications for surgical referral versus non-surgical maintenance strategies.
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This course equips oral health clinicians to confidently and compassionately discuss fluoride and its alternatives with patients who are hesitant, unsure, or fluoride-avoidant. Using a patient-centered, non-judgmental approach, participants will learn how to “meet patients where they are,” explore their values and concerns, and present evidence-based options that include fluoride varnish, fluoride-free products, and viable fluoride alternatives.
Learning Objectives:Identify at least three common reasons patients decline or question fluoride and describe strategies to respond without judgment.
Compare and contrast the benefits, limitations, and appropriate use cases of fluoride modalities and fluoride alternatives.
Demonstrate patient-centered language for discussing fluoride, fluoride-free options, and fluoride alternatives.
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Dental implants require a maintenance protocol distinct from that of natural dentition due to differences in anatomical and histological structures. This course outlines evidence-based strategies for the prevention and management of peri-implant diseases. Topics include risk assessment, biofilm disruption techniques, selection of appropriate instrumentation, and patient-specific care intervals. Participants will review the latest guidelines for diagnosing peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis, with emphasis on early intervention and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Learning Objectives:Identify clinical and radiographic indicators of peri-implant health and disease.
Implement maintenance protocols designed to preserve peri-implant tissue health and osseointegration.
Apply appropriate instrumentation and patient education techniques for implant-supported prostheses.
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The biggest thing your patients and team remember is not your dentistry—it’s how your practice feels. When stress, miscommunication, and emotional reactivity drive the day, culture suffers, drama rises, and patients notice. This course helps dental teams solve those problems by strengthening emotional intelligence, shifting mindset, and aligning daily
micro-actions with the culture they actually want. Through simple reframing tools and real dental scenarios, participants learn to respond instead of react, reduce conflict, and create a calmer, more supportive experience for both patients and team members.
Learning Objectives:
Describe how mindset and emotional intelligence directly influence stress, miscommunication, and culture in a dental practice.
Identify common daily micro-actions that either escalate drama and tension or build trust and psychological safety on the team.
Apply simple reframing and emotional intelligence tools to real-world situations such as difficult patients, schedule stress, and team conflict.
Develop a personal action plan to adjust their own habits and interactions in ways that create a calmer, more supportive practice culture.
With over 26 years of speaking experience, Dr. Kelly works with you to tailor programs and training for your target audience. These are a few programs Dr. Tanner has recently delivered:

