Making your own album

To explain treatment to patients there is one tool that stands out as the best by a mile. That tool is an album of before and after cases of your own work.

Over they years I've tried so many things to explain treatment, including x-rays, flip charts and brochures.

Once, I even bought a computer system from the Chicago Mid-Winter Convention that enabled me to play short videos to patients. It could show them how a root filling, a crown or an implant were done. Yet, in spite of spending $6,500 on the system, I unplugged it and never used it again after only a few months because my success rate went down.

Why did the system fail? Because of a false assumption I made.

That assumption was that patients want to know the technical details of their treatment. My thinking was that if they understood the details then they would want the treatment. That is completely wrong.

Except for a few rare patients most of them could not care less about the technical details of treatment. Mostly, all they want to know what the benefits will be, how long it will take and what it will cost.

To explain the benefits you show them before and after pictures.

"Here's a job I did a while ago. This person has teeth very similar to yours. Here they are before... And, here they are after..." Simple!

But, the photos must be your own. They can't be ones you bought off the internet or in a book from Ronald Goldstein.

So my most urgent advice to all young (and old) dentists is start building an album of before and after photos. The sooner the better. Not on the computer – an actual album you can hold in your hand is much better. The time and effort it takes will repay you many, many times over in improved case acceptance.