The Customer is Always Right? Managing Demanding Patients in Dental Care

First of all, let's start with the definition.

What exactly do I mean by "demanding" patients?

Other names for them are:

TLC                   

VIP                          

Picky                     

Difficult                   

Primadonna                

Challenging               

Special                 

These are the patients you dread seeing or lose sleep over.

They are the patients that dislike something about their treatment or disagree with you.

They come with a list of things they researched on the internet.

They have more questions than your average patient.

They also tend to show up without an appointment and demand to be seen.

They are the ones writing bad reviews...

These patients often require extra attention, special accommodations, or special requests. And when things go wrong... they blame you, even threaten a lawsuit or want a refund.

I think we are pretty clear on who we are talking about in this article. 

So why do we have these patients and what to do about them?

We end up with demanding patients for three reasons:

1) We attract them 

2) We accept them during consults

3) We unintentionally encourage them to have unrealistic expectations

The first part happens before the consultation. The second and third happen during and after the consultation.

Let's take a closer look.

Before the consult

We are talking about your marketing strategy.

How intentional are you about the type of patients you want to work with?

Most dentists are not.

Here are things to consider:

• Attract on purpose
• Decide on your ideal patient avatar
• Based on that, decide which dental insurance you will accept, the language to use in your ads and the places you will go for networking or speaking arrangement.
• Make this decision intentionally and watch your practice transform.

During the consult

You are the gatekeeper of who becomes your patient of record. 

Most doctors accept practically anyone because they are driven by:

Financial pressure ("I have to meet my production goal")

Taking things personally ("They'll think I'm not a good doctor if I turn them down or can't solve their problem.")

Fear of criticism and rejection ("If I turn them down, I will lose my referring doctors and new patients)

People pleasing ("I help people. This is what I do. Yes, it is a transfer case and extremely complicated, and the patient wants it done "right," but someone has to help them, no?...")

Perfectionism ("Can you make this tooth more pointy, doc? And this one wider?) You get in the weeds with a patient and feed their unrealistic expectations.

Imposter syndrome: You second-guess your work, doubt your skills, and tend to seek acceptance and external validation.

Fees: Deep inside, you think your fees are kind of high, so you don't exude confidence during a consultation or, even worse, add extra services/items for free to ensure a problematic patient doesn't leave.

So what can you do about all this?

The work is on growing your confidence as a clinician, separating your self-worth as a person from your dental skills, believing deeply in the services you provide, and serving your patient instead of trying to help them or please them.

Next week I will go into detail on what this work looks like.