Not every patient will say yes and accept your treatment plan. Sometimes it can feel like an unfair and incomprehensible defeat. For example, you carefully diagnosed a patient’s dental situation.
You lay out the problems and the solutions and come up with a sensible treatment plan. The treatment discussion is going well, until suddenly, out of the blue, the mood changes.
The patient becomes skeptical and argumentative. They leave, saying: “I’ll go home and think about it.”
You go on to your next patient feeling mystified. Later that afternoon a nurse tells you: “That patient asked us to send his records to another office.” Ouch!
Such situations will happen. How do you deal with them? When you face defeat, you can either be gracious or you can be mean. As the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling says:
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;”
So, whenever a patient loses confidence in you or your treatment plan it’s important to do four things.
First, accept their decision gracefully. Whinging and complaining and saying they are “making a mistake” will only further alienate them. Once a patient says a firm no accept it humbly and with a gentle smile. That gives you the best odds of retaining them in the practice.
Second, offer alternatives. There are always alternatives to ideal treatment. See if the patient would like something else. It’s better to do something than nothing. Find out if there’s some other way you can help the patient.
Third, stay positive and be kind to yourself. Just because a patient said no to ideal treatment doesn’t make you a bad dentist or a bad person. It also doesn’t mean that the next patient will say no. Some dentists take rejection personally and go back into their shells. Keep offering each and every patient ideal dentistry. Don’t let a single no ruin the rest of your day. Remember this, the three main reason that patients reject treatment are that they don’t value their teeth or they don’t have the money or both. None of those situations are your fault.
Fourth, learn and grow As mentioned, everyone gets a no sometimes. If, however, you’re hearing no to your treatment plans all day long then it’s a sign you’re doing something wrong. Take the feedback and improve your skills so that you present treatment in a better way. Take a communication course if you need to.
When a patient declines treatment, pushing harder or stripping the plan back are both wrong. Here’s what actually works and why it starts with letting go.