Something to Help You AND Your Patients (AND it’s FREE)

It’s been a while since I posted but I have not been wasting my time. I’ve been working on something to specifically to help you and your patients.

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All dental health professionals know how important it is to provide comprehensive Oral Hygiene Instruction for their patients because the majority of preventive dental care needs to be carried out by the patient themselves. Unless your patient properly cleans their teeth and has an acceptable dietary intake of refined sugar, then irrespective of how well we provide high quality restorative dental care, it will ultimately fail (one way or another).

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Yet despite this, including knowing how important such education and motivation is for the ultimate outcome for your patients’ dental health, we as a profession always face a dilemma. We feel obliged to provide such information to the patient but inevitably we feel obliged to provide this for a minimal cost to the patients (in fact over 50 years I have observed that many dental professionals feel it is a duty of care to provide oral hygiene instruction for free). This uneconomic situation is reinforced by the fact that most dental insurance companies do not pay for such educational instruction even though it would be the best investment possible because prevention is always better (and cheaper) than cure.

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This position is compounded because routine treatment for soft tissue health is, sadly, poorly prioritised by patients, dental insurance companies and unfortunately by most dental professionals (especially if they are busy). Partly this is because, historically, soft tissue oral health has been prioritised badly, but also because it is hard to explain the concept to patients when periodontal disease is so innocuous and hard for the patient to see any obvious immediate benefit from treatment (as opposed to the relatively quick process of removing caries and restoring a large cavity – and possibly arresting dental pain).

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Whether periodontal treatment is provided by a dentist or hygienist, there is always a rush to provide satisfactory, quick corrective treatment to restore soft tissue health. Often we hope that such a correction will be miraculously maintained by the patient after treatment even though, due to time and cost limitations, we have not provided adequate education or instruction so that the patient can satisfactorily maintain adequate cleaning and/or diet. However, we often knowingly fail to observe a rule we all know to be true: The Definition of Insanity is to continue doing the same thing and expecting different results!

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For these reasons, I decided to help change this obvious conundrum.

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I have recorded several videos that are applicable to this topic.

1???????????????????? How to Keep You Teeth

2???????????????????? How to Reduce Tooth decay

3???????????????????? How to Clean Your Teeth

4???????????????????? Scientific Facts About Your Dental health

5???????????????????? TMJ Dysfunction and Pain

These are NOT professional presentations. They are definitely amateur productions – just like when I present this information to patients in my own surgery. They may be considered motivational in a small way, but are mostly educational and informative. The links can be found on my professional website:

www.drdalegerke.com/FAQ ?(under the Heading of VIDEO PRESENTATIONS)

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I provide these videos for you to use if you wish. The objective is to make it easier (and cheaper) for you to provide good oral health education and instruction for your patients without having to spend time (and therefore money) on matters that probably do not cover your practice expenses. I am very happy to provide this to you and your patients for free.

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There may be some variations that you might like to consider, rather than providing the video link mentioned above. Firstly you might like to record your own videos with similar content and also put them on YouTube. Alternatively you might rather give your patients a copy of these videos on a USB stick so that they can more easily review them (particularly if they do not have access to the internet). If this is the case, I am prepared to provide you (at cost) with a “master” USB stick with a copy of all the videos, so that you can copy the content onto a USB stick for each of your patients. If this is your preference, then please email me at: [email protected] and I will send you details.

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Lastly, I would recommend you consider this. As mentioned, I would hope that the primary purpose of you providing information about the video recordings would be because of the benefit they provide for your patients. However, one cannot overlook the medico-legal liability of not providing adequate “duty of care” advice and information to patients regarding their oral health. Instruction and treatment for periodontal and tooth health is becoming an increasing issue with medico-legal claims (and quite rightly so). The problem for dental health professionals is the ability to provide evidence or proof that they bestowed adequate and correct information to cater for any periodontal (and tooth) problems. If you refer patients to these videos (or the literature also found on the FAQ page of my website) – or better still, provide a USB stick with the information – and make appropriate notes that you did this (and of course provided adequate treatment for any pathology present) then I would consider this would go a long way to providing acceptable evidence that you have afforded correct and adequate information and/or treatment for your patient.

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Additionally, I always aim at providing consistent oral hygiene information to my patients (covering all the appropriate details required to maintain good oral health). However, my worry has always been that I might miss certain aspects. Alternatively, if hygienists provide instruction, I can never be certain if the delivery was adequate – or how much detail was given. What I want to know (when I review the patient at recall) is that proper and thorough instruction has been given and that, if the patient is not maintaining their oral health adequately, it is due to either a technical issue with their efforts (which is easily corrected with further instruction) or they need further motivation or an emphasis on the need to improve their diligence or their oral health will consequently suffer. One of the main advantages of utilising the videos I have recorded is knowing exactly what information is provided, thus making it easier to decide what aspect needs to be corrected if your patients are not properly maintaining their oral health.

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Please enjoy the videos and use them as you see fit.

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Kind regards

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Dale Gerke

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