Chairside Stories to Improve Case Acceptance

It is important to connect with your patients on more than a clinical or dental “level”.  Helping them to understand their treatment through a story is an effective tool when presenting dental treatment.

Create a story that most people can relate to.  Most commonly, at The Academy, we use stories about cars, because most patients either have or have had cars, and understand that maintenance of cars can take time and money.

When we work with doctors on how to improve their case presentation skills, one of the most common concerns we hear is that they don’t want to sound like a pushy salesman.  And who would?  We certainly don’t want to put any dentist in that position.  Instead, let’s create a story that relates you as the diagnostician to something most of your patients experience, and that would be getting their cars worked on.

Let’s use the scenario that you have a patient in for their routine hygiene appointment, and you come in to do the exam.  A great story to tell your patient is that you like to think about their hygiene appointment as the oil change appointment for your car.  This maintenance helps keeps your car running well.  But remind the patient that when they bring their car in for an oil change, the mechanics also look at numerous other things about their car.  That is what the dentist does at the hygiene exam.  “Just like the mechanics look over every area of your car’s engine, I am going to look at all of your teeth and find out if anything needs attention today.”

And take it one step further.   “Like the mechanics, they also look at what might need attention on your car BEFORE your next scheduled maintenance.  With your permission, I will let you know what I am concerned with in your mouth in the short term as well as long term future.  I don’t want you to be surprised if something were to happen to your mouth in the next few months.”  Just like you would like to know what might be wrong with your car before you breakdown on a major freeway, most likely your patients will APPRECIATE knowing what might happen in their mouth.  We can all agree that if and when things go wrong, it is never convenient!  That’s Murphy’s law.

This story now gives you permission to share with your patients, not just what is “broken” in their mouth, but you can plant seeds about future work that simply because your patients USE their mouth, dentistry does wear out.  Again the car story works here.  “Just like the tires on your car wear out, simply because you use and drive your car, your past dental work wears out because you eat and chew each day.  This is the opening your need to show patients older fillings that are breaking down, wearing on teeth that will need repair or replacement and showing periodontal disease that is progressing.  You can now create a comprehensive treatment plan that may cover a span of several years.

Closing this conversation is just like the mechanic reviewing your car’s needs;  “There are several teeth that will need work in the future.  What I can’t predict is when.  I’ve noted all the teeth that I am concerned about and when you are ready, we can fix these restorations prior to them breaking or we can address them once they do wear out.  But just like with your car, it is usually more convenient and hopefully less expensive to do this in advance rather than waiting until the teeth actually break.  I would hate for you to have a dental emergency when you are on vacation, or on a weekend or the day before a big event in your life.  But the choice is up to you.”

The best part about this scenario is that if a patient chooses to wait on recommended treatment, and they DO have broken tooth in the future or a true dental emergency, they often will say to the doctor “You did warn me about this”, and then the dentist can be the hero and take care of their dentistry without ever having to “sell” the case.

Using analogies, or story telling is a great way to get your message across to your patients in a way that they can understand, relate to and where they don’t feel “sold” or reprimanded.  Taking this “salesman” stigma off of the doctor allows them to diagnose everything they see in a patient’s mouth and create comprehensive treatment plans that can span several years.