The other day I had a new patient in our office. She had a few dental needs and over the course of a few appointments we treated all of those needs. She was a great patient who had a huge phobia of dentistry and certain aspects of care. She seemed very pleased with our care at Augusta Family Dentistry and her family who had accompanied her to her several appointments seemed pleased too.
On the final appointment of this phase of her care her mother announced that I had passed the test as a caring dentist and that the mother of the family was not only glad that her daughter was a patient but was going to become a patient herself. She had a large family and was deciding to bring her whole family into Augusta Family Dentistry to become regular patients. That is thrilling for a dentist to hear because that is the focus of our whole campaign in dentistry. See your dentist and hygienist at least every six months. This is preventative dentistry, here we call it PREVENTISTRY. We try to provide the routine preventative care to prevent problems before they happen and fix the problems that do happen while they are simple, small and inexpensive. Hearing the decision that this family made to return to the dentist actively was the highlight of my day to that point. Yet it gets better, as you'll hear. I was very pleased that this family saw that I was really applying for the job to be their dentist. In fact, that is the mindset that I try to use during every moment of patient contact. I ask myself, "Am I treating this patient in a way, so that they will choose me to be their dentist today and always?"
I was glad to see that with this patient and her family they did choose me. I won't take that responsibility lightly and perhaps that will be enough to persuade her and her family to choose Augusta Family Dentistry each and every time in the future too.
I took that thought one step farther. I asked the mom what it was about the situation that caused the decision to bring her family to our office for their dentistry. She responded that it was the way that her daughter was handled in our office. It came down to how she was treated. Long story short - she chose us because of our behavior. I think that this reflects our
mission statement. You should look up our mission statement on our website and read it - especially the last line, which is the most important part in my opinion. It is the grand-slam home run of the whole statement that ties it all together. We truly do feel that we are the best option that our patient could choose at that moment. If and when we don't feel that we are the best option that our patients could choose, then we refer the patient to a specialist or for another opinion. We truly do care. Perhaps that is what makes all the difference. In this case it was so cool to me that they noticed it and it did make all the difference. Thanks for reading this blog. Let me know what you care about and what you want to know about.
