The Choice

The other day I had a thought and realised that I'm close to being in clinics for 2 yrs already, given that the current 2nd are going into clinics now.
In my experience, I has gone through a fair share of decent and difficult pt.
Today I treated my first primary care pt and I really felt rewarded to give someone emergency pain relief. On top of that, it was the most decent cavity prep I did all semester.
In the afternoon though, was... somewhat a contrast to a perfect morning
Have u ever called anyone and got yelled at non-stop for 10 mins? How about that...twice?
That was my pt and today I thought I have had enough
so I gave my pt a good chat

"......I would like to talk to u for the next 5 mins and I want u to listen to me without interrupting. Is that ok with u?

I feel that you are unhappy with what I’m doing and you feel that I’m wasting your time.
Maybe because it takes longer in a public hospital or you have been frustrated with your previous dental experience elsewhere

But this is what I do. I look in your mouth. I found out what is the problem and I’m trying to fix it. You have what is called a chronic periodontitis. The accumulated harden plaque over many years caused the gum to inflame and the gum pocket depth to increase. This is where the bleeding comes from. Like I said to you before, the tooth doesn’t bleed. The gum bleeds.

What I did was going around the tooth and cleaned it all up. The demonstrator made an extra effort to make sure I did a thorough job during the last appointment.

I had the instrument in your mouth for over an hour last time. You, out of all the people should have realised I was cleaning the tooth you asked me to.

We did warn you that the tooth may not recover because it has been left in a bad condition for many years. You think that you have a strong tooth. To a certain extent I do agree that you have been able to keep it up until now but it is not healthy.
The gum pocket in a healthy mouth is 1-2mm. Yours is 20+mm. There is almost no bone support left on the tooth. I want your wife to have a look that I’m not lying to you.
Sometimes the treatment doesn’t work out the way you wanted. I’m a dentist, not a miracle worker.

Now I know that you are obviously unhappy and that makes me unhappy having to listen to you. I can assure you that I did my best but you felt that my best isn’t good enough for you. So I don’t think I would be able to help you any further. Now it’s time for you to decide.
I have 2 options for you
1) You continue with the treatment I’m proposing or
2) I can refer you to a 5th yr student or a specialist (with small amount of fee). I can tell you now that they both would be picking up the same scaler and do exactly the same thing as I did but maybe they can do a better job

If you want me to refer, your name will be put on the waiting list but if you want to continue with my treatment, you have to accept that the treatment may not goes as how you would like it to be......."