CAD/CAM international magazine of digital dentistry

opinion _ patient communication I 7. As long as I make a note on the records, I am keeping myself within the legal rules. The enemy within here is fear, and not the pa- tient’s but the clinician’s. And so the filter is applied and the patient is offered the treatment plan that the clinician believes is absolutely necessary or the one he feels the patient needs. Presumably, he leaves the rest until such treatment becomes (as he deems it) necessary or needed. An additional filter, ofcourse,istheonethatpushesthedentisttowards offering treatments that are well paid or earn the most number of units of dental activity. Let me run this analogy past you. Imagine taking your three-year-old, £25,000 car in for a 30,000-mile service. During the course of this, the technician discovers that as well as the regular service items needed, your car also has two sets of worn brake pads. In addition, the front brake discs are warped, the rear dampers are leaking and two tyres are nearly at their worn-tread marks. As a customer, which of these phone calls would you like the garage to make? 1. The call that lists the faults, your options and the costs for having everything put right? 2. The call that tells you about the faults they think you will want to hear? 3. The call that tells you about the faults that you will be able to see? 4. The call that tells you about the faults they think you will be willing to have fixed? 5. The call that tells you about the faults that will earn them the biggest margin? Andwhatwillthegaragedoaboutthefaultsthey don’t tell you about? Perhaps, put a ‘watch’ on their recordsandconsidertellingyouatthenextservice? _Duty of care I know that some of you will be wincing already at my comparison between a clinician and a me- chanic but there’s more mileage in this analogy still to come. After paying for just the service, you drive off from the garage with the faults left unreported. A child runs out in front of your car and you fail to stop in time because of the worn tyres/brake pads/discs/dampers. In the investiga- tion that follows, these things come to light and spark a witch-hunt. A good garage owner dare not risk this and the inevitable damage to the garage’s reputation. He takes his duty of care seriously and must tell you exactlywhatthegaragehasfoundwrongwithyour car. So what’s really going wrong when a patient leaves a dental surgery with half a treatment plan? In my opinion, this happens because we’ve lost the simple, straightforward, trusting relationship betweenpatientandclinicianthatwehadasafinal- year student. External circumstances such as insur- ancecompanies,theeconomy,thepracticefinances and, probably most importantly, our lack of confi- dence and self-esteem have filtered our behaviour so that we agree to compromise our professional skill set and integrity in order to be liked, keep the patient or stay within our comfort zone. So, how does that sound? Not so great from whereI’msittingandlet’snottellthenationalnews- papers. When I left the NHS in 1992, I decided to get rid of all the filters I had acquired, and simply show and tell my patients what I could do for them as if they were one of my family and money and timeweren’tanissue.I’veusedexactlythesameap- proach in my coaching practice. I was lucky enough to be mentored by some great coaches on the idea that you often do your best coaching just before you get fired (for telling it like it is). And that’s what I do for our clients. In my view, you have to decide what sort of dentist you want to be: either an anxious single- unit,one-tooth-at-a-timedentist,foreverdestined to gross a thousand pounds a day, whilst complain- ing that patients don’t want your treatment; or a dentist who communicates clearly and straight- forwardly with your patients about what you can see in their mouths and the best way to fix it, there- by giving them back their responsibility for their health and leaving the decision about whether to proceed with them._ I 35CAD/CAM 3_2012 Simon Hocken is Director of Coaching at Breathe Business, a business-coaching consultancy based in Kingsbridge in the UK. He can be contacted at info@nowbreathe.co.uk. CAD/CAM_about the author “We agree to compromise our professional skill set and integrity in order to be liked.”