How Dental Professionals Handle Patient Anxiety

As a dental professional myself, one of the common reasons people of all ages are afraid to come to the dentist, or don’t like coming to the dentist is because the experience is uncomfortable for them. From x-rays, cleanings, extractions, and fillings there seems to be a common discomfort with the dentist that many people feel. My job is to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible. The last thing we want is people being scared to come to the dentist for any kind of cleaning or procedure they may need done. The reason being? Great oral care leads to a prolonged life ten out of ten times. Therefore, we want our patients to view our dental office as a place of comfort and care.

This longing of ours, however, is not the simplest thing to achieve because certain procedures are definitely more uncomfortable than others. For instance, a simple cleaning for the average person produces no pain or discomfort at all. However, there are patients that have an overarching fear of any kind of dental work (even cleanings), so we have to make sure we can accommodate such patients to make them feel comfortable even while receiving a simple cleaning. We use sedation dentistry for these types of people. They’re given a pill to take 15 minutes before their appointment begins to help relax them while in the chair. These particular pills aren’t near as strong as what we’d use for that of a root canal procedure because they don’t have to be. In all honesty, these pills are more for the patient’s ease of mind. It definitely puts an affect on them, but it’s all in all not that strong.

As far as more severe procedures like fillings, root canals, and extractions we use a heavier dose of a pill that the patient takes before their appointment. In addition to these pills, we also use nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas, in order to further sedate our patients while in the chair as the operation is being performed. If you’re not familiar with dentistry, we also give numbing shots that will go into the cheeks and gums of the patient in order to keep the entire experience as pain free as possible. Our patients are our priority and their comfort, in our opinion, is crucial to their overall well being because if they take care of their teeth, they’ll take care of the rest of their bodies.