How To Find the Perfect Dental Surgeon

Your dental surgery’s waiting room is swamped in old magazines, teeming with cheap plastic chairs and laden with carpeting thinner than a size zero model. Is this when you should switch dentists?

The surgery itself looks less hygienic than a rat’s nest, all footprints on the linoleum floor, stuffing breaking through the lining of the dentist’s chair, and a surgical tray containing more grime than the coating on your gums. Would you decide to switch dentists at this point?

Your dentist is a friendly enough sort, but they’re clearly interested in profit and little else. Before every procedure, they ask, “Do you have enough money to pay for this?” They might as well be rubbing their hands and cackling to themselves before every filling they etch onto your pearly whites. Is now the time to start searching for a better, less profit-oriented dentist?

The answer to all these questions is yes, yes and yes.

Entering the buyer’s market

In the UK, dentistry has become a buyer’s market. Services are split into three tiers, each of which reflects the intricacy of the dental procedure. The highest tier will cost you more than £230, and includes bridges, crowns and other laboratory work.

With such hefty price tags in place, we have to be choosy when searching for the person who’ll look after our teeth.

Dental health has become increasingly important over the past decade, with poor gnashers related to heart disease, mouth cancer and various other illnesses. Yet, according to National Smile Month, 27 per cent of people in the UK will only visit their dentists when they have a serious oral problem.

A large part of this reticence to visit the dentist could fall down to the levels of service at their local practitioners. After all, if you receive shoddy treatment you won’t want to return. But there are more than 40,000 registered dentists in the UK. If you don’t like yours, it’s time to move on.

So what should you look out for when searching for a new dental professional?

The levels of waste

There’s a lot of waste in every industry, but if dental waste is removed inexpertly it could lead to a public health hazard. All waste should preferably be handled by a professional company with a large amount of experience in the disposal of toxic chemicals.

And if your dentist doesn’t have efficient waste disposal at its fingertips? It’s time to ditch them.

Customer reviews

When the internet took off, one of the first types of sites to hit it big were customer review sites. Was the restaurant you visited a bit rubbish or filled with panache? Was the new shop on the high street worth checking out? And, more importantly, was the last dentist you visited up to snuff?

Customer reviews are a vital tool for public health in the modern age, so give them a look before you head to your next dentist’s appointment.

Levels of politeness

In the self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People, writer Dale Carnegie claims that the only way to keep a customer satisfied is to focus on service, not payment. Once they’ve been provided with effective service, they’ll be more than happy to pony up some cash.

If your dentist conforms to all these traits, sign up with them straightaway. You’ll leave their practice smiling every time.