Forming truthful, long-term relationships has become a top priority for one New Jersey dentist as some patients lose trust and rely on other sources over their providers.
Rajdeep Randhawa, DDS, is the owner of Innovative Dentistry in Colts Neck, N.J. He recently spoke with Becker's about why building trust with patients is the most difficult part of this job.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What is the most difficult part of your job?
Dr. Rajdeep Randhawa: Having enjoyed the privilege of practicing dentistry for 35 years in India and New Jersey, I would not denigrate dentistry to a much lower level by saying it is just a job. With no offense to my wife, dentistry was my first love and still is. I enjoy being a dentist everyday, interacting with very smart, interactive patients, and will practice as long as it is physically and mentally possible due to the tremendous trust my patients place in me, some of them traveling long distances for the specialized dentistry they want, running away from the traditional "maximally invasive" insurance industry-dictated dentistry.
The most difficult part of my profession that only a few top dentists who do "fee-for-service" dentistry understand and acknowledge is eliciting complete trust from patients of all age groups, and forging healthy, long-term dentist-patient relationships. After achieving this trust, maintaining the trust in dentist-patient relationships for the long term is very important too.
A quote by Stephen R. Covey to illustrate the importance of trust in dentist-patient relationships that is severely lacking in insurance-dictated dentistry or corporate dentistry: "Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships."
Many of the new patients that come to our practice for second, third or fifth opinions are expressing the broken trust from earlier dentists because they let [in] a third-party interference, sometimes doing maximally invasive, very destructive dental procedures that could have been easily avoided or replaced with minimally invasive dentistry.
The most difficult part of dentistry for recent or older dentist graduates is that when they are talking to their patients or prospective patients about their recommendations, the patients will question everything because they trust social media, the "Google dentist", the all-for-profit insurance industry, "coupon dentistry" and all other sources more than their dentist. Many of them had bad experiences with earlier dentists, so it's difficult for them to trust dentists anymore. Even corporate dentistry starts missing their "financial heartbeats" when the patients start opting for basic nonprofitable insurance dentistry or coupon dentistry, declining everything that involves huge amounts of patient expenditures or large, expensive financing options. Patients have to trust your abilities and advice with you having enough knowledge and experience to answer their questions confidently. Otherwise, even if you have the best communication/clinical skills, they will not be able to trust your skills for complicated dental procedures when they visit you for correcting botched dentistry from earlier providers.