Dentists are Changing the System

There is always a dentist joke.

What is the difference between a doctor and a dentist? The doctor never calls himself a dentist. You’re a dentist because you didn’t get into medical school. On TV, the physician is a professional while the dentist is either a clown or a villain. Both are doctors, but in society, dentists are feared and mocked, while physicians are respected and admired. To remain within this system is to perpetuate this stereotype on a daily basis. To remain in this system is  to exist without controlling one’s own narrative.

Society perceives that dentists offer a product rather than a service. Dentists feed into this belief by eagerly offering treatment discounts, pushing procedures, and missing the opportunity to treat initial visits as an opportunity to comprehensively familiarize themselves with a patient’s medical history. Spending the time to work cooperatively with the patient during treatment planning as a diagnostician and surgeon, not just an individual selling products, is the way to cultivate a new perception in which we are of tantamount importance to physicians. Pursuing continuing education is the way to stay both current and ahead.

In any communication, one of the first places an individual looks is the mouth. As dentists, we are at the forefront of all interpersonal interactions. In addition, patients tend to visit their dentists more frequently than their physicians. A 6-month recare schedule gives a dentist the unique opportunity to follow up with a patient’s health and symptoms more closely than a physician can. The sheer prevalence of oral manifestations in cases of systemic diseases, substance-abuse, smoking, and eating disorders allow a dentist to be the first line of therapy for a patient.

So the next time society signals that the mouth is not connected to the rest of the body, consider signaling back that a multitude of diseases ranging from Crohn’s syndrome to tuberculosis can be distinguished by oral presentation alone. Signal back that certain cancers such as oropharyngeal cancer and oral squamous cell carcinoma are located only in the mouth.

The level of respect any one professional wields will frame the patient’s outlook of the profession as whole. We are pioneers of customer service on a daily basis. Let us also be pioneers of respect and of valuing ourselves.

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