New Team Meeting: The Power of Your Words

The words dentists and their dental teams use when working with their patients can be extraordinarily powerful. The selection of words a dental team chooses to use can evoke an emotional response from a patient, even when they don't expect it.

All clinicians have treated patients who get angry, fearful, surprised – sometimes they can react with a combination of emotions. Not all of these responses are necessarily negative, but they can get in the way of what you want patients to learn about their mouths while they are sitting in the dental chair.

Sometimes the words a dentist and their dental team choose can be tied to an emotional experience for a particular patient, and simply hearing those words can create a negative association. The way a clinician and their dental team choose their words and their delivery, along with the inflection in their voice, can help shape a patient's experience in the dental practice.

In our new team meeting, The Power of Your Words, Dr. Steve Ratcliff encourages the entire dental team to think about those small, but very important, interactions that occur in the dental office on a daily basis that affect a patient's perception of who the dentist and dental team are.

After viewing this team meeting on the power of words in the dental practice, your dental team will have a better understanding of:

• Which words create emotional reactions from patients


• Specific words and phrases to consider eliminating from the dialogue with patients


• How to craft alternative phrases that are more easily received by patients

Log on now to begin learning about the power of your words. If you're not yet a Spear Digital Suite Premium member, click here to learn more.

Denise Prichard is the Editor for Spear Education.