Parents at the Dentist Office

Why do parents take their children to the dentist? Normally, parents take their children to have their teeth cleaned. They reward them when they have no cavities; you did such a great job! What happens when they do not have ideal hygiene? These children end up with cavities. Now the parent(s) start in on their children about what they eat and drink. Often times I would love to say, if you didn’t buy these types of foods or you made sure your child brushed more often, it is quite possible they would not have cavities.  If a cavity is not taken care of within a reasonable amount of time it gets bigger. One would think this to be logical thinking; this is not the case in many dental offices. In the dental practice I work for so many parents blame the children for their cavities or act like the dentist is making them up. When a child is brought into our office Dr. Mehta has an ethical obligation to notify the parent if their child has cavities. She did go to school to be a dentist. Our office will go over a treatment plan letting the parent know how much the filling(s) are going to cost, and we offer to set up an appointment as soon as possible.

This one particular patient’s mother is so unbelievable. Her daughter was in for a cleaning in September, of last year, for a routine cleaning; it had been almost a year since she had been to our office. Due to this patient’s extremely busy tennis schedule there was no way her mother could get her in to have these cavities filled. Finally, she comes in today to have the fillings done and one of the cavities had gotten bigger; I explained this to her mom in depth.

The mother looked at me as if I were speaking a different language. What do you mean it’s bigger and going to cost me more money? So I could not refuse, this was my opportunity to tell this woman in a way she could understand. I said, “Well if you would like for us to just take out the part we diagnosed six months ago for the original price we would be happy to, but if you leave the rest of the cavity it will decay into her root and you can pay for a Root Canal and a crown, or she could possibly loose the tooth”. Now the woman can apparently understand the language I am speaking because she says ok it’s not a problem. Another analogy I like to use, if you have cancer are you going to only take half of it out?

Patients will be patients and dentist’s are here to help, but do not treat them like they didn’t go to school to work in this profession. Dentists are doctors and should be treated as such.