This is from Richard Charon via Facebook.
Subject: Long distance traveller
Just getting in gear for next Saturday’s RA course
Teams and individuals will travel from Durham, Woking & Sheffield to my Newbury practice. But they are not the long distance travellers I refer to.
Yesterday ( yes that is dentistry for busy people 8-)) ) I saw a new patient who had tracked me down from a Google search and had travelled from Swansea as she’d had RA before and could find no-one locally !!
She liked what she saw and by the end of the one hour consult including digital OPG, she has agreed to several more visits to complete basic treatment before starting Invisalign.
Leaving aside the helium for me, in as much as this lady will travel 5 hours return M4 drive to have the treatment she desires in the manner she desires; it begs the question, do you know a S. Wales practice that would benefit by expanding their services to include RA (light sedation) for anxious patients?
Can it be true that there is nobody between Swansea and Newbury that can service this patient’s needs and wants? Or is the truth that no-one is bothering to make the effort to tell their potential patients what they can do to help them? By providing a solution like RA or IV sedation you can have patients who become raving fans. I hear dentists tell me that they won’t “indulge” nervous patients, these are frequently the dentists who are wondering why their so-called regular, non-plan, patients need several reminders to attend for routine inspections (horrible phrase but better than “just a check up”).
Perhaps dentists presume that they are so skilled that none of their patients would benefit from sedation? Perhaps they think that to remove four premolar teeth for a child who has never had any previous dental intervention with just local is the very best that they can do. Just because the child is well behaved doesn’t mean they won’t be traumatised by the experience.
I have had to have multiple extractions twice in my life. Once aged 6, my first dental experience, and the norm for the time, I had four deciduous teeth and one first molar removed with GA, the black rubber gas mask and the noise of metal instruments on metal trays remains with me to this day. It took a highly skilled and sympathetic dentist to turn around my confidence.
Six years ago, before embarking on fixed appliance, therapy I had three teeth removed, two of theses were surgical extractions. I chose my clinician carefully, not only for her superb surgical skills, but also for the compassion she shows to her patients and I was treated using intravenous sedation.
During the 24 years prior to the sale of my practice I used sedation on adults and children routinely, if both parties agreed that it was the best way to treat them. At no point did I find it be anything other than an excellent practice builder. Richard, by utilising modern marketing techniques, is seeing his practice and skills, job satisfaction and profits moving to another level.
What’s stopping you?
The Incisal Edge 