Monday, February 03, 2020

Adjusting to Innovation--Dentists

When I grew up I only saw the dentist as couple times.  Then a dentist in the Army filled a small cavity, and I went years/decades before I started seeing a dentist regularly.  Then he retired and I finally made connections with a Reston dentist.  After a few years she sold her practice to a new dentist.

Anyhow, for the first 70 years of my life, I was used being given a paper cup of water to sip and then spit out as the session went on.  When I started with the Reston dentist she had a setup with a flow of water in one tube and a suction tube to drain it out.  That's new and difficult for me to adjust to.  The new dentist tells me to close my lips periodically, which I don't remember his predecessor doing.  Somehow I get the feeling that a kid in the dentist's office for the first time would have a structured explanation of what's going on.  But because I'm old and perhaps because the dentist is assuming that I've had previous experience/training they skip that step with me.

The other new thing is flat screen TV to watch.  Not that I can take advantage--my eyesight isn't that good, the dentist is often obscuring my sight, and I've no idea of what I might want.  I wonder how many of the patients really get any benefit from it, versus it's being a signal of quality?

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