A Reminder About the Process

I was speaking to a patient recently and I asked if she wanted to do something about her “gummy smile.” “What gummy smile?” she responded, and then asked for a mirror. Oops. I'm constantly reminded that there is a wide variation in beauty and that every individual gets to decide what that is for them. By the way – the patient had not come in asking about esthetics and I had failed to engage her in a process to see what I saw. Had I done that (which IS what we teach here at Spear Education), her response would undoubtedly have been different. In fact, had I engaged her in the process, I might have discovered that her smile and her grandmother's were nearly identical (she REALLY loved her grandmother), and not even asked the question. It's about them, not about me.