A Gentle and Comfortable Experience
The first thing that I think we do extremely well as a practice is that we identify patients with dental anxiety. I think we create an environment where it’s completely okay to be anxious and I think most mentally healthy people should be a little anxious at the dentist. I think the first thing that we offer to patients is understanding, that we appreciate that people come in with different levels of fear, and confidence, and excitement, and anxiety for coming to see us. I think the recognition and making it okay is the first and most important part for a patient to be able to talk about it and to feel okay about it and know that we’re going to listen and that we’re going to do what we can to help them, which makes the second part of the treatment or the options that we offer easier to discuss.
Some of those options are as simple as timing of day, when it’s easier for a patient to come in, when they may have less stress, when it works better in their schedule to minimize some of the other anxieties up to the other end of the spectrum, which should be doing basically some chemical, we call antianxiety medications, that we’ll use for patients that need some help to help relax in the chair. We always try our best to be as minimally invasive as we can and try and address those anxiety concerns that are at a root level and see what we can do to help patients. A lot of times, understanding and listening to a patient goes a long, long way to get them more comfortable with maybe some of the traumas they’ve had in the past, but to that end, we understand the benefits of pharmacology and utilizing a number of different antianxiety medications, as well as nitrous oxide to help patients get through appointments and make them a stress free and anxiety free as we can.