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Six Powerful Ideas To Ramp Up Your Treatment Acceptance

Six Powerful Ideas To Ramp Up Your Treatment Acceptance
by Linda Drevenstedt, RDH, MS

Years ago, my first boss, a Pankey Institute instructor, taught me that to win a patient’s trust and acceptance of his extensive treatment plan, he needed to use an approach that involved the whole person: body, mind, and emotions. Psychology Today says these decisions are 80% driven by emotion.

Three other factors also influence how your patients process information:

• Visual—they need to see information.
• Auditory—they must hear information in clear vocabulary.
• Kinesthetic—they need to touch or experience the information.
  

According to a Lake Superior University study, visual information drives 65% of the decision-making process, with auditory at 30%, followed by kinesthetic.

All of these influences together contribute to better connections with your patients. Keeping all 6 factors in mind can ramp up your treatment acceptance.

Your Approach

It may be perfectly obvious to you when a patient’s condition needs to be treated. But, remember that the first human response when bad news is presented is denial.

Your patients primarily process your treatment information via your visual presentations. Your intraoral photos are imperative. When your patients see what’s going on inside their mouths, which is part of their body, it affects how they feel and what they will decide.

The Process

The following 4-step formula puts all 6 concepts to work for you and helps you keep it simple:

• Problem—Communicate in vocabulary that a seventh grader can understand. State the specific problem the patient has and hand a picture to the patient illustrating the problem as you explain it. Ask your patients how they feel about the problem and if they would like you to outline your recommended solution. By asking permission, you are not “selling,” you are problem solving with your patient as a partner.
• Solution—Present the solution with pictures of how you have solved this problem for other patients. Choose pictures that aren’t too graphic. For example, do not show a screw in the bone for an implant. Many patients don’t really know what a crown is, so have a picture of a broken-down tooth and then the crown on the tooth. Don’t go into details or graphic explanations. Ask your patients how they feel about the solution. Appeal to their emotions as you proceed. Your patients are either psychologically tuned into gaining something from their dental investment, or they are tuned into avoiding something with a dental investment. Include both in your treatment discussion.

Read full article on DentistryToday.