Dental Reflections 009

so heres one which is a teensy bit off the clinical and more into the philosophical.

what exactly is the relationship of the practitioner to the patient? what is it that patients expect from us, and we from them?

this was sparked after lunchtime discussions with Boss K about our ever-beloved FON patients and their weird ways. the main point here being, why in the world would a patient want to kick up a big fuss and aggravate the very people who they expect to treat their illnesses? we've all seen them in various forms wherever we practise... the Geylang Door-Knockers, the people who get the NDC patient-service 'bomb-squad' down on practically every visit, the nasty parents at HPB. and yet, these people come back again and again and again to our clinics despite having made their unhappiness very unclear. lets be honest; we're not the only dental practice in town. there is an abundance of dental treatment available to the population, from the back-lorongs of Geylang to the high towers of Orchard Road. some even go across the causeway on occasion. but yet the problematic people still return like homing pigeons. is it the excellent (for its cost) service we provide? the ability to break a young ego and spoil his day? or is it the fact that we're inexpensive?

i think that something should be done about this. we should be able to perform our services, get thanked for it at the end of the day and not have to worry about verbal abuse or getting stalked or complaints being forwarded to the boss for doing treatment in a manner consistent with modern standard of care. we should not have to have patients complain about rising costs of dental work when they live in condominiums and have nice watches and gold jewellery. we should not have people barge into our rooms demanding to be seen as walk-ins for loose teeth when the periodontal damage was already done 10 years ago. and we most certainly should be appreciated for heroically scaling the severe periodontitis cases instead of getting scolded or complained about because they feel sensitive when their great walls are being broken down. we should be allowed to blacklist nasty patients from our clinics, and to share this information with the other polyclinics if necessary. people who abuse us and want to play the system for all its worth do not deserve to benefit from healthcare in the public sector; their selfish interference in fact decreases efficiency and drives up running costs. i already suspect that healthcare bleeds a huge chunk out of the government budget. people should pay for their dental work so that more money can be turned to education and general medicine for the terminally ill.

and as an aside, i hate it when people call my treatment cheap. it makes me feel cheap. i do the best work humanly possible under the conditions. but the public thinks dental work is like buying refrigerators or cars; compare the price tag and buy something cheap. how clean they end up after a scaling is not important so long as it's 'gentle'. they'll never see the subgingival wall, anyway, and all that matters to them is that the black spots have been removed...