Communication Tips for Building a Dental Patient’s Trust

Building a patient’s trust is super important since most patients actually tend to avoid going in for regular checkups. If the patient isn’t confident in their dentist, odds are they will leave that dentist’s care after the first appointment.

Communication is one of the keys to building this trust. Affective and comprehensive communication is necessary for keeping patients; if you only use technical terms, the patient may feel scared or worst, offended.

Here are some good ways to meet your patient’s language needs:

Active listening

This is an excellent way to demonstrate respect for your patient. Listening without interruption and without judging make up the base of this skill but there are other points to consider:

• Paraphrase as if you were talking to a human, not a robot.

• Then transmit those words into a summary for your patients so they know you’re actually paying attention and understand.

• Be clear about any doubts or concerns they have right away.

• Finally, discuss and reiterate any information your patients have given to you so they know they are sincerely in good care.

Honest communication

Always advise your patients properly and inform them about any situation going on in their mouth clearly. Some dentists have a bad reputation of recommending expensive treatments that are not necessary or presenting them as the only option when there are cheaper options available.

Doing this is not only disrespectful and unethical but, if the patient finds out, you might end up with a lawsuit or losing your patient’s trust. Being honest is one of the pillars of creating confidence in a client to keep it straight and present all of the possibilities to your client.

In the end, if your patients keep coming regularly, you won’t need to tack on an extra-charge to make a profit.

Confidentiality

It’s important that your patients know they can actually communicate with you. If they believe the information they give is not safe at your office, they will probably lie about pertinent details regarding their health (i.e. smoking habits).

Respect, care, and adaptation

Communicating in a respectful and caring way and adapting to a more digestible vocabulary for patients will make them feel comfortable and taken care of.

Need an increase in patient cases? Look no further than Zentist Referral where you can manage appointment requests, store patient records, and build a referral network that brings new patients to your practice.

For more information, visit Zentist today.