The Working Mind
Oral Healthcare Manager
"This course provides a safe space for oral health professionals to explore the importance of maintaining positive mental health in their workplace."
- CDA President Dr. Heather Carr
FOR ORAL CARE LEADERS
Leading a dental practice means caring for your patients and your team at once, often while managing your own stress quietly in the background.
A 2025 study of Canadian dentists found 44% of those surveyed reported a mental health issue such as depression, anxiety or PTSD, and practice owners named staff and practice management among their toughest challenges.
That’s why the Canadian Dental Association worked with the Mental Health Commission of Canada on a version of The Working Mind for oral health care professionals, with an added module for managers. Your leaders learn to recognize early signs of stress in their teams and in themselves, and to start supportive conversations before a hard stretch becomes something heavier. Your whole team gains a shared language for talking about how they’re really doing.
The result is a practice where people feel psychologically safe to speak up, and where the care your patients receive reflects it.
Steadier leaders. Supported teams. A psychologically safe practice, and better care for every patient.
Group bookings only.
The Working Mind: Oral Care Manager is delivered privately, scheduled around your clinic’s calendar. Practice owners, clinic managers and team leads set the tone for how mental health is talked about in a practice, and training them together builds a consistent approach across clinical and administrative teams. To fit busy clinic schedules, the program can be split over two days, as long as both fall within 14 days of each other. Available virtually across Canada, or in person in the Lower Mainland. In-person delivery elsewhere is available with travel costs covered.
$375 + GST per person
Contact us to check group sizes and availability.
hello@ateliermhl.ca
50%
of female Canadian dentists and 37% of male Canadian dentists report experiencing mental health issues.
Practice owners specifically cite staff management and leadership as primary stressors - meaning the person running the practice is often managing their own mental health while trying to hold everyone else together.
Maragha et al., JDR Clinical and Translational Research / University of British Columbia, 2025
The Curriculum
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This program was developed by the Canadian Dental Association in partnership with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to address the specific pressures of running a dental practice: patient anxieties, high staff turnover, and the day-to-day reality of managing a team's mental health alongside your own. It's delivered by a facilitator who has managed teams herself, not just studied them. The videos, scenarios, and case studies throughout are drawn directly from oral healthcare settings, featuring real dental professionals discussing the clinical, emotional, and business pressures your team faces every day. Running a sustainable practice starts with sustainable leadership, so this course protects your own resilience just as much as it builds your ability to support your team. What happens in the room reflects what you're already living day to day.
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We explore fundamental mental health concepts and the specific dynamics of stigma in dental practice - where the relentless pressure for precision and professionalism can make it significantly harder for both leaders and staff to acknowledge when things are not okay. -
Module 2 - The Mental Health Continuum
We take the guesswork out of workplace well-being by introducing a practical, color-coded spectrum tool. Leaders learn to recognize early, subtle changes in their own mental health and their team's - knowing exactly when and how to open a supportive conversation before a situation becomes a crisis. -
During this module we examine the specific chronic stressors of dental practice leadership - including high-stakes patient care pressures, staff management, the commercial realities of business ownership, and the unique isolation many practice owners experience - while building personal resilience using the Big 4 Coping Strategies. -
Our final module provides leaders with the practical management tools to build a healthier, safer clinical environment. We focus on psychological safety, key leadership responsibilities, and workplace accommodations; how creating conditions where every team member feels safe to discuss mental health openly and without judgment works to protect staff retention, reduce costly burnout, and strengthen the overall resilience of the entire practice.Please note
For prevention purposes, this course includes content on suicide awareness. Verbal trigger warnings are provided prior to discussing this material to ensure a safe, supportive learning environment for everyone.
Reduces stigma in a small practice setting where struggles are difficult to hide and harder to raise
Recognizes early warning signs in a close-knit team using the Mental Health Continuum, before it affects patient care
Prepares you to support a struggling team member, even while managing scheduling, patients, and the practice all at once
Atelier Mental Health Literacy + Facilitation delivers The Working Mind as parallel programmes - one designed specifically for managers and one for employees - because what each group needs from this training is genuinely different.
When both cohorts complete their respective streams, they return to the same workplace with a shared language and shared frameworks for mental health. That shared foundation is what builds psychological safety - and psychological safety is what changes workplace culture.