When a patient comes in and they have severe anxiety, I’ve had patients, almost at least three patients, maybe four patients a week, where when you shake their hands, literally they’re terrified. They’re shaking in the chair. A lot of times, just simple, you have to treat them like human beings.
You have to treat them like, not judge them, not judge all this. They might have had five dental problems. They might be embarrassed.
They might be shy. They might be ashamed of even being here. And then we add in the anxiety, the fear, all the other things.
Tremendously terrified of being judged, of being afraid of causing, getting pain, causing, us causing them pain from the previous experience. Our job in the office is to really break down one appointment at a time. Our first appointment is very much comprehensive care, going over their x-rays, their findings, and just making, just make them aware of their education of, okay, hey, we have solution.
They’re not out of the options. Then once we know what solutions they have and what they’re able to achieve, we then go over during the treatment, whether we have options to make them more comfortable with either some sort of sedatives, medications, anxiety relieving medications, or laughing gas. Just having a good team partner that they know the doctor, they know who’s going to be working with them.
They even know our assistants, our team members. They know everybody. That once they’re comfortable, usually, let’s say myself, and if I have my, my, my co-worker, my team member, let’s say my, my dental assistants, right? They also form the same bond with the patient.
Too often, once the patient is knowing that they’re in the safe hands, once they get the simplest procedure done, the easiest procedure that might take 10 minutes, they get that first step towards anxiety. They have the faith. They have the trust that they can come back to the practice, whether it’s this practice or any practice.
Once they’re the one who make the decision, our job is just to hold their hands throughout their journey. That’s it. And that’s all we do.
We try to hold their hands and get them through slowly one step at a time.
