Trust Our Expertise at Relieving Dental Anxiety in Chester

Many patients come to the dentist after some kind of dental bad experience or dental trauma. So one of the things that I've really struggled with and tried really, really hard to pay attention to is what can I do in order to make a person feel comfortable or help a person get through the trauma of a bad past dental experience. Many times people choose to do this with medication. They tend to do it with some kind of a drug. It could be nitrous oxide gas, it could be some kind of oral sedation. I've chosen to handle it in a way that to me feels more natural.

From start to finish, what I look at is what kind of an experience is a person gonna have when they walk through my door. And it really starts there because my office doesn't look like a dental office. I try to make it look more like their living room or their den. Comfortable environment. A lot of space. We don't want people to feel cramped. Particularly when a person comes through the office and they see things that look like their home, and they go into an operatory, that doesn't look like this sterile thing. It looks like more of a comfortable cubicle. I put a large window in front of every dental chair. And I put high ceilings in every operatory. And I make the operatories oversized. And the reason is, I don't want anybody to come in and feel the claustrophobic anxiety.

And then when you have the dental work done, we do everything we can to eliminate the things that hurt. I mean, the bottom line is people are afraid because they think they're going to be hurt. It is very possible to have extensive dental work done without it hurting you. So we explain things, we tell the people exactly what to expect. We avoid the trigger of not meeting your expectations. If a person comes to you and you explain to them what realistically, realistically they can expect, and you deliver realistically, then I think that helps to solve the mistrust. The anxiety honestly comes essentially from mistrust. So there's been a mistrust somewhere in the patient's past that triggers this anxiety. We do everything we can to develop a realistic trust. Tell you realistically what we can do, tell you what we can't do. And I think that over time, the reason that people are able to actually have their dental treatment completed when they're anxious, they're able to have that done here because they've developed trust.

When the patient comes with a traumatic experience or fear of unknown, I think that would one of the major things. When they were younger, some people say they got Strep, so that's why they never went back to the dentist. And then they came back, they come to the office finally because of the pain and stuff like that. It's kind of sad, but fear of unknown, I can really help them out by explaining.

The way we approach is okay, you sit there. You're not one of the headcount that we are looking into money. We're more like we're a human being and you trust me and I trust you. I really try to make a conversation patients with pain. It's a scary place in a way. It's not a massage place. Everybody has anxiety.

But before I go to any procedure, I make sure that what I'm going to do, sometimes with the kids especially, I told them... I showed them and I let them touch it, so they know oh, okay. This is not a needle. This is not something that they can afraid of it. I make sure we open it up the conversation, and then you can see they can open it up. They can more relax.

Nitrous oxide is a great source. However, I rather giving them not any kind of chemicals or anything like that, if it's possible. I think it's important to giving them without. Besides the anesthesia that we injecting, we can make them relax, because it's all about what we are doing, what we are providing services. I think it's pretty much in their head we are concerning about.

That's the approach that we're doing. I've seen a lot of people receptive. I had kids. Unless they look at me like... as soon as they look at me they're crying, I actually didn't... and I have several family, they coming in, in my old practice, and the girl is looking forward to seeing me. She's asking her mom, “When we going to the dentist?” I believe that I'm providing minimal anxiety to them, how I approaching and taking care of their needs.