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This month's opinion dicsusses the importance of having the correct behavioural patterns in a dental clinic. Dr Ajay Kakar takes a look at what impact can the natural approach of the dentist have towards the patient and how it may impact the patients response towards dental thearpy. Doc, Your hand is very soft !!!
Being in a group private practice with five other dentists, one of them happening to be my wife, how often I have heard the above statement. So many times patients have commented that this doctor is very gentle, he/she never gave me pain culminating with the statement that his/her hand is very soft. I always wondered what is the patients perception of a gentle dentist or the dentist with soft hands. My wifes hands are definitely much more softer to touch than mine. I play badminton regularly and have small callouses and generally the palm is rough due to some other physical workouts. But how could the patients know that. She always has her gloves on. I always have my gloves on. Well, maybe the patients make the statement as a metaphor. What it implies must be that the entire dental treatment was painless and gentle and it did not give them any trouble. But how much pain and trouble could the patient have when being treated for a non vital tooth with a Root Canal Filling. On the other hand, me, being a periodontist always have to treat the patient who comes with severe gingivitis and loads of supra and subgingival calculus. All that I need to do is to bring the ultrasonic near the patients tooth and he/she jumps. How gentle can certain procedures get. Some extractions tend to be totally trouble free and we do get the patients who do not seem to respond to the LA and are constantly complaining that they are having pain. I always strive to get to the point that the patient starts telling me "Doc, Your hand is very soft". Ceratin inherent levels of discomfort will vary between different modalities of treatment and will also exist to a certain level for all kinds of dental therapy. It is upto us to be able to create an atmosphere which hints at painless dentistry and keeps the patient in a positive frame of mind. Talking to the patient for a few minutes before initiating the procedure and getting him/her to relax totally may go a long way towards having a co-opeartive patient and can reduce the actual treatment time drastically. It is my belief that this interaction with the patient along with the manner in which it is done, projecting a sense of caring for the patients trouble, is a very significant factor in making your hand soft for the patient. One the other hand, it is also wise to prewarn your patient about some inherent discomfort to be faced by the patient either during the treatment or post-op. A few small habits can work wonders. It is wise not to bodily shift the patient's head for a more convinient working position. It may be more fruitful to gently touch the chin and guide the patient' s head as he/she moves in a more comfortable working position. If you could avoid jerky hand movements during the procedure it would definitely be more comfortable. Another important factor that comes to my mind is the general atmosphere in the clinic. If the ambience is of a fun place, a light heartedness preva iling all over, good music in the background, it makes the trip to the dentists a far cry from that generally portrayed in most cartoons and comic strips of the dentist-devil pulling out a tooth while the patient helplessly screams and tears hir /her hair off in pain. Even today, with the advent of modern technology and extremely fast information dissimination almost more than 50% of the patients enter dental clinics with a mortal fear of the dentist and all forms of dental treatment. If
one of the objectives of the dentist is to be able to
make these 50% patients get rid of their fears and
actually look forward to a visit to the dentists, it
would slowly but surely within a generation change the
prevalent opion of the layman about the dentist. Such
extraneous factors coupled with the loving and caring
attitude of the dentist towards the patient will make the
patient remark "Doc you do have a soft
hand !!!"
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