Factors Which Influence Why Patients May Be Afraid Of The Dentist

There are many different types of reasons why a patient may be specifically nervous at visiting a dentist.

It is often a combination of the five different senses which are the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of touch, a sense of smell and finally the sense of taste. So let’s go through each of these in turn to see how they may contribute in making a patient nervous at the dentist and how specifically a dentist can minimise these factors.

The sense of hearing as an auditory sensation is very significant for patients. The most obvious one is the noise of the drill. But there are also other factors which may not be immediately obvious. This relates to the manner in which the dentist and the staff talk to the patient. This also then spills over into how indirectly the staff talk to other patients. If the manner is not particularly nice, this will indirectly affect you as a patient. The telephone tone and manner in which the staff talk to you is also critical and extremely important if you are a new patient looking for a new dental practice. At the other end of the auditory scale is silence when there is little or no sound. You do not want the dentist waiting room to sound as if you are in a morgue and all the echoes are amplified unnecessarily.

Patients who were nervous will say that they hated the dentists smell and this may trigger feelings of when they used to go to the dentist as a child. A common reason for a dentist smell is the smell of Eugenol found in certain dental materials such as root canal cement and temporary fillings. It is also found in eugenol containing temporary cement used for linings or to cement temporary crowns with. The smell of Eugenol lingers on for a long time even after it’s use has been stopped. It seems to penetrate inside the fibres of your clothes and in addition it seems to stay in the air for a long time. Patience will often also complain of a burning smell when the drill is being used on a tooth. This smell is usually the smell of the dental caries being removed from a tooth or infection from root canals.

But the sense of taste is important as the taste of latex on a dentists gloves can trigger anxiety in a patient. The taste of filling materials especially those containing eugenol has been mentioned above. It is important to realise that the senses often work in combination so that the smell and taste of materials triggers an accelerated anxiety within the patient.

Most obvious is the sense of sight. Patients obviously do not want to be seeing blood and the dentist as some kind of evil surgeon. When a patient sits in a dental chair it is the unfamiliar surroundings and all the equipment including the dental mobile unit, the dental drills and the tools that will cause anxiety and stress for a patient. Dental environment such as the ambiance of the place should be conducive to calming a patient and not increasing anxiety in and already agitated patient.

Senses generated and experienced are extremely significant such as the giving of a dental injection, pulling the patient’s lips and cheeks back and the general feelings associated with dental procedures such as fillings, crowns and scalings. Needless to say these can largely be minimised by being gentle and by being skilled in your dentistry skills.

There are also other reasons why a patient is often nervous at the dentist and partly this is the loss of control when they are lying back in the dental chair. However it is easy to give the patient control that they want by asking them to raise their hand if they want rest or if they want you to stop. The other aspect is obviously to keep on asking the patient at frequent intervals during their treatment if they are ok. It is important to realise that dental anxiety decreases patient cooperation and it also reduces the pain threshold. The pain threshold is the level at which a patient will feel something. It is not uncommon to find a tooth which has been totally anaesthetised but the patient says at it is still painful.