News

Can Your Clinic’s Environment Reduce Patient Anxiety And Stress?

Can Your Clinic’s Environment Reduce Patient Anxiety And Stress?
by Amruta Patel, DDS

Despite modern advances in painless dentistry, patient anxiety continues to be an ongoing concern in the dental environment today. Many people associate the sight, smell, and sound of a dental clinic with the pain (or perceived pain) of treatments they’ve had in the past. The trouble is that this fear and anxiety can affect their commitment to proper dental care.

What can you do to help patients overcome their fear and anxiety, or dentophobia? First, understand what causes stress in patients. Changing the design or environment in your clinic can help too by reducing the stress triggers that make patients feel anxious, embarrassed, helpless, or afraid before a dental care procedure.

What Causes Anxiety and Stress?

There’s no conclusive research that has pinpointed the cause of dental anxiety and stress, but some studies suggest that a past bad experience or painful treatment is one of the most common causes. Other factors include the possibility of pain during a procedure, the ineffectiveness of anesthesia, the sterile clinical smell, and the sound of the dental drill.

For some patients, anxiety and stress may be related to the way they are treated by the clinic’s staff. For instance, they may feel that the dentists or technicians are not taking enough time to answer their questions and set their concerns to rest, or that they may have to wait all day for the treatment to be completed.

Read full article on Dentistry Today.