So for us here at Kids Smile, making a patient comfortable is like priority. So for our new patients or even patients that have been here several times, some of them are still a little bit anxious. So we make sure we do what’s called TSD for every new patient, as tell, show, do.
So we tell the patient what we’re going to do, we show them what we’re going to do, and then we finally do it. Sometimes we may take, it may take a whole visit for the tell, show, do. It may take a whole visit to get patient desensitized to the dental environment.
But basically, that’s how we try to move through each appointment with a patient. For a child with dental anxiety, it is very important for them to feel comfortable at dentists. You know, we have teeth in our mouth, we’re going to have it for the rest of our lives.
And so we want to make sure we’re taking care of them for each and every step of our life. So as far as we want to try to make sure that anxiety is, if not even totally disappear, at least reduce to the point where they feel comfortable coming in so that they can learn at an early age to start taking care of their teeth. We do different modalities and trying to alleviate that, alleviate that anxiety.
Whether it’s just desensitizing the patients, having them see what the tools look like, having them hold on to a tool. But a different level, we may have to use a nitrous oxide sedation for those who are pretty, very anxious. And that’s very, very helpful.
But basically, as far as, you know, just trying to make sure they’re not anxious to the point where they don’t want to come through a dentist. So we try to get to that level where we want to, where we try to educate and just have them be comfortable coming in so they can take care of their teeth for the rest of their life without anxiety.
