Medical Care

1.  Effective communication is key to putting patients at ease in a dental environment.  At times, you will find barriers to communicating clearly.  Describe your understanding of four potential barriers when communicating with patients and three ways that you empathise with patients when communicating with them. 

2.  How do you respond appropriately and effectively to patient enquiries?  Include in your response how you determine the purpose of an enquiry, and prioritise messages, make appointments as well as the importance of maintaining patient confidentiality.

3.  Your operator is planning to complete a full maxillary and full mandibular denture for a patient.  List the five dental appointments required and the items that will be needed from the dental laboratory for each visit.  Ideally, how long will it be between appointments for the laboratory to make these dentures?

Various barriers may obstruct the path of effective communication among the patient and its dentist which involves cultural differences which may prevent either of the stakeholders to express completely. Another barrier may be speech or listening difficulty from any of the counterparts that may prevent proper communication. Differences in perceptions and viewpoints may also prevent easy communication. Another barrier may include various distraction or lack of attention and interests due to personal and financial crisis which may make the patient restless for which dentist fail to initiate a strong communication (Cole, 2014).

Dentists try to feel the pain of the patients and understand their problems so that they can provide empathy. Secondly they should try to maintain dignity of the patients and thereby be empathetic towards their wishes and demands. Moreover they should try to engage themselves in friendly conversation rather than being strictly professional so that patients feel that the dentists are empathetic towards them.

In order to respond appropriately and thereby respond effectively, the dentist should first establish an effective communication. The first step should include effective listening of the patient’s problem and noting where the patient is stressing on. Only after listening to the entire query of the patient, dentist should start solving the query in easy terms so that the patient does not get confused or is not able to understand anything. After proper communication gets initiated and flows accordingly, main concern of the patient is noted or even cross questions can be done by dentist to increase the clarity of the conversation.