Do you or someone you know suffer with dental anxiety or fear?
You are not alone. Feeling stressed when coming to the dentist is more common than you think.
Here at Bespoke Dental Care we pride ourselves with being able to help patient’s overcome ‘dental stresses’ and becoming more comfortable in a clinical setting. Dental anxiety or fear can be for many different reasons for example a bad experience in the past, fear of pain or simply just the fear of the unknown. Many people can learn to cope with the stresses and others just avoid the situation completely by not attending a dental practice.
We would like it so that everyone can feel comfortable with attending the dentist; we understand that, for some, it may never be an enjoyable experience however we will try to make it one as much as we can as it is your health that is important at the end of the day; down below we explain ways our experienced team help our nervous patients manage dental anxiety as there are many techniques and coping mechanisms that can be offered.
Here at Bespoke we like to allow extra time for nervous patients, this is so they do not feel rushed or hurried into stressful situations. To help with this we also have a hand up rule, just raise your hand if you need to stop and as long as it’s safe to do so we will immediately stop any treatment we are doing and give you a break. We can also explain what we are doing throughout a treatment which can be quite interesting to some.
Alternatively if you don’t want to hear us nattering on we have the perk of music, we have a Sonos speaker which allows our patients to choose any music or artist they would like to listen to, this helps to relax and drift away to somewhere else for the duration of the treatment. We also encourage patients to bring in headphones and listen to their own music.
We can use numbing cream and we also warm our anesthetic routinely, allowing for a much nicer experience when having an injection. When anesthetic is cold it can be a shock to the body (which is warm) creating the pain from the injection. We understand that this can be the worse part of a dental appointment which is why we don’t rush it, we take as much time as needed and can start by placing numbing gel on the area (if needed) and leaving it to work for a couple of minutes creating a numb gum and then the warmed anesthetic would be administered. We have a stress ball that loves a good squeeze and we have breathing techniques we talk patients through which can help in stressful situations.
We also offer a treatment coordinator service. This service is great for nervous patients as it allows you to speak with a friendly and knowledgeable member of the team in a private non-clinical environment with a cup of tea or coffee and talk over everything from what you are nervous about, your treatment plan to any questions you may want to ask.
We like to remind our patients that they are in the driving seat at all times, if they don’t want to go ahead with anything then they can stop and if there is anything else we can do to help our nervous patients feel more comfortable we will, we think having an understanding dental practice with experience in nervous patients is very beneficial when trying to tackle dental fear.
So if you are a nervous patient that’s been putting of having a check-up and you would like to book in for a free consultation with our treatment coordinator to start off with, we would love to hear from you, just give us a call on 01474 355493 or send us an email on info@bespoke-dentalcare.co.uk