General supervision? I'm not sure what that means. Is the dentist in the office next door is legally "sufficient supervision" even though he is not actually present in your office while your hygienists are doing cleanings in your absence. Does the dentist come in and do the exams, or do your hygienists only perform and charge for cleanings while you were gone? I never really heard of this before. Thanks for the reply.
In CT, as dentists we don't have to be present in the office while our hygenists are working. So, on the few days a year where both my partner and I are out of the office on the same day and the hygenists are working (i.e. an occassional CE course that we both want to goto, a charity golf tournament we both want to play in, a very specific vacation overlap time), our patients are notified ahead of time that the docs won't be there, only prophies, radiographs and fluoride tx(if applicable) are billed, no new patients are scheduled those days, and any patient where one of our hygensist sees something remotely interesting are reappointed in the following few weeks for a doctors exam. Plus, my partner and I review the radiographs taken of our pateints while we weren't there. This scenario happens maybe 2 or 3 days a year, not a big deal.
Back to the original question. Solo practitioner vacation time and/or associate vacation time. Solo practitioner, office closed = no office income generated(unless the state you practice in allows unsupervised hygiene). Many docs in this situation will still take 3 to 5 weeks of vacation per year, some like diagnodent take less. Your call based on your feelings. The trend though tends to be adding in more vacation days as the number of years you've been practicing increases.
As an associate, how vacation works varies based on your employer. Some employers will dictate when you can take your vacation (for many this would be anytime when the senior doc is in the office working so as to always have a dentist in the office), some vacation will be paid, some will be unpaid(once again based on the employer), typically a 3 to 4 week vacation allowance per year for an associate is an average amount. This is often a bargaining point when contract negotiations are happening between a potential senior doc and a potential associate.
Personally, I take a little more vacation time than diagnodent does. I'll take a week in March to go skiing, usually another 3 or 4 days in late May/early June to either attend a conference with my wife(if it's in a location I like) or just plain old vacation to celebrate our early June wedding anniversary, 4th of July week is the only week of the year where my entire office is shut down, a 4 day weekend in mid/late August, and full week in late September/early october for vacation. Add in the standard holidays (New Years day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day + Thanksgiving Friday) and then X-mas eve/x-mas day. Depending on what day of the week x-mas is on will determine what extra days off I'll take around then, usually atleast the 24th and 26th, sometimes more. On top of that I add in about 10 days of CE courses a year to complement my normal 3.5 day a week work week. As a result, I don't complain too much about my work schedule!
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