Patient-Centered Care

            I had a recent discussion with a dentist about building trusting relationships in your practice by ensuring we’re recommending the best for our patients. This means offering the best care, using the best materials, and recommending the best products that are tailored to treat a patient’s unique needs. I then happened to read an article referring to this same concept. Both my discussion and the article similarly concluded that individualized care elevates a patient’s overall success.

            I feel like a broken record lately when discussing patient-centered care but it is such an important aspect of our profession. Staying up-to-date on the best cements, composites, and surgical techniques is truly important.  And so are our tools for patient education. I have said before, a patient may not come to your office because you offer products like TePe, but once they see that you are recommending quality home-care tools that are tailored to them, they can further trust in the level of care you are delivering in other areas of the practice. 

           I recently temped in an office that had very basic items in their hygiene closet and recommended outdated practices even though the façade of the practice seemed very progressive. I felt terrible knowing that there are so many more options for each patient’s success, but I wasn’t in a position in which I could help. The experience further reinforced my fight for tailored patient care. 

         I like to think of it as the “golden-rule”. As a patient, what if you found out you were getting the same one-size-fits-all care as every other individual that walked through the door?  Everyone’s story and needs are so very different from the next person. TePe has created products that can be tailored to individuals for more than 50 years. Take a look at the many educational videos to learn how they can be implemented in your practice.