Do you over-explain?

I get the feeling that many dentists are frustrated school teachers. They love giving their patients lectures on dental problems.

But often, ironically, the more you explain the worse things get. There are a few reasons for this.

Firstly, most patients couldn’t care less about the technical details of their treatment. By giving long explanations you are wasting their time, boring them and annoying them.

Secondly, long explanations make it sound like you are trying to justify yourself. It’s almost as if you are trying to prove your diagnosis/recommendation to the patient.

Thirdly, the more technical details you give the patient, the more things the patient has to wonder about and question.

“If the tooth is dead don’t we need to take the root out?”

“That sounds really painful.”

“How do you stick the new tooth on?” etc. etc.

Let’s say a patient comes in with a non-vital tooth that has been aching.

The best thing to do by way of explanation of the problem is to say: “Your tooth’s infected. That’s why it’s hurting” and then leave it at that.

The worst thing to do, for the three reasons given above, is to bring out some brochures and a white board and give them all the technical ins and outs of how to do a root filling.

I suggest that you put the patient on a “need to know” basis.

Before explaining anything, ask yourself whether the patient really needs this information, or whether you are being a schoolteacher.