16 www.pagd.org Q dentistry issues ant answer, “This is my new dentist. I trust this doctor.” Starting with your patient’s urgent need, which you must treat right away, you have your patient already telling you exactly what they want. This is where you come in. In Napoleon Hill’s famous book, Think and Grow Rich, he advised six words to create a successful future: “Find a need and fill it.” Your patient just identified their dental wish list. What are you waiting for? Fill them! • Benefit from the endodontist being your least paid motivator. Most dentists do not need more patients. Instead, you need to do more for the patients you already have. In our endodontic practice, we tell every patient what’s possible for their smile and dental health after, of course, attending to their urgent endodontic need. You send one tooth to the endodontist but every patient we see requires anywhere from $500–50K of needed dentistry. Almost every patient we see for endodontic treatment has crooked, dark, chipped teeth, calculus on the lingual of their mandibular anterior teeth, or is missing a tooth or teeth. • Sometimes, all your patient needs is a little permission to take the next step to accept your treatment plan. You just have to say what is possible, the benefit, the time, the investment, and then walk away. Learn to accept whatever is their answer. If they choose short of your treatment plan, no worries, just tell them to tell you when they are ready. In the meantime, let’s maintain your plaque and caries control so everything will be ready to go when you are ready. 2. BRING IN YOUR ENDODONTIST WHEN PROBLEMS ARE SMALL • Do not wait until a problem’s simple solution is too late: Broken file, block, ledge, transportation, perforation, wrong tooth, or wrong diagnosis. This speaks for itself. If you cannot make the diagnosis in short time, you cannot easily find a canal, or you cannot slide down the canal to length in the first time or two then quit. Be smart and bring in your endodontist before the treatment becomes impossible or there is catastrophic blunder that cannot be corrected without advanced treatments. It is hard to make the restorative dentist a hero in these circumstances. Better for us to say to your patient that, “Dr. Restorative Dentist is very smart to bring us in when it is easier to solve this problem. Other dentists often wait until it is too late.” We want your patient to be saying to themselves, “I am with the right dentist in Dr. Restorative.” He or she knows their strengths and limits. “Only by opening our walls to the flood of interdisciplinary dentistry can we know how, when, and why the different dental specialties can contribute to comprehensive biologic, esthetic, structural, and functional patient oral health.”
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