Contrary to popular belief great dentists are more than just someone who can fix your smile. Great dentists care about their patients.
We’ll be writing a blog about why it’s important to have a dentist who isn’t just concerned with giving patients beautiful smiles but also about keeping them healthy for life.
What is the difference in a dental specialist and a general practitioner?
Wouldn’t that be amazing? To know that every member of the team will do what is best for you from the moment you step in the door of a dental practice. Specialist dentists don’t come cheap, but they are the best option because of their high-quality service.
Specialist providers have different qualifications to general practitioners. After becoming a dentist, periodontists such as myself complete an additional 3-6 years of continuous, monitored/tested (daily) postgraduate education. This ensures that we are able to give you the best, most thorough and expert care, while creating beautiful, healthy smiles.
Stay tuned for future blog posts that will provide more information about the different dental specialities available and what they can do to improve your smile.
But this does not mean that all general dentists and specialist dentists can be bad. You can see that there are many methods to attain excellence. You can’t know who is truly great and who isn’t before you get treatment.
It is not surprising that you want to be treated well by the right person for the job. The General Dental Council has a list of specialists in the UK. By checking this list against the provider, you can answer the most important question: Does this provider have the clinical expertise necessary to provide the service I need?
Being a technical expert does not make you a great dentist. A great dentist is both a technical expert at a subject and someone who understands and cares for their patients.
Although technical skill is important, great dentists understand that excellent customer service is just as important. Is your provider actually there to take care of you? Are your concerns and worries addressed by them? Is it easy to feel secure in their knowledge and care? Do they provide excellent customer service?
What about online solutions, though?
When you approach any provider, and especially when they offer online services, it is important to ask the above questions. The rise of direct-to consumer online dental services is creating a lot controversy within the dental profession. The most popular offerings are aligners and teeth-whitening services. Many people may be tempted by their low prices and promise of convenience and then realise that they have made the wrong decision later (watch this video).
We spend much time looking at our patients, both in terms of their oral health as well as their lifestyle, to make sure that the treatment we recommend is right for them. Direct-to consumer aligners don’t require any clinical examination.
Let me explain: without having completed surveys and had architectural designs drawn up, you wouldn’t be able to decide to build your house on a piece of land. That’s something that I doubt anyone would ever dream of doing. To do that, you will need a full assessment and complete survey before you design a product. This is not possible with direct-to consumer clinical aligner system.
Without doing any research, you may endanger the health of your teeth and gums by using direct-to consumer products to solve a problem (watch Rhiannon’s story). Our mission is to create beautiful, healthy smiles.
It’s easy to make a smile look beautiful. The trick is for patients and dentists to know if the beautiful smile is healthy. You can only know this if you’re very aware of any warning signs that may indicate that your smile is damaged due to treatment. When we refer to beautiful and healthy smiles, we mean that we are going from the root up and not letting anything get in the way.
You can spot potential dangers if you have a full mouth assessment by an expert. This is a crucial step that you should not skip – just like with direct-to-consumer aligners. You might end up spending a lot on quicksand for your house. This could lead to:
- Recession
- Teeth breaking
- Drifting back to their original positions
- Toothache from insufficient evaluation of abscesses.
These are the main problems we’ve seen in patients who didn’t receive the right treatment before they came to see us. Patients who have previously been treated directly-to-consumer may also be eligible for our help.
Our blog is your guide for a beautiful, healthy smile
I hope to share with you the beauty and importance of healthy smiles through our blog series. I want my patients to be able to understand the intricacies that both me and my team face in caring for each patient.
London Dental Specialists is focused on one thing: making sure that our patients are taken care of. Patients feel comfortable and safe in our practice. We are available to help them regardless of their past treatments or genetic predispositions.
This feeling is achieved through our core values. These are fundamental to everything we do.
- We are passionate about dentistry
- We are friendly and open with patients, referrals, and each other.
- Everything we do is done with diligence
- Our professional ethics is strong
- We desire to be at the forefront of our industry.
- We are open to helping in any situation and will adapt.
These things are crucial because they often come up in patient feedback. Patients regularly complement our professionalism and excellence. Our patients know we will do everything possible to make sure they get the best care possible – that’s what a specialist dentistry does.
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