Dentist Review - Find a Dentist

You want to be able to build up a friendly confident relationship with your dentist, so choosing the right one in the first place is essential.  For those patients with few dental problems necessitating only occasional dentist visits, the dentist you choose may not seem important but, for those needing more frequent treatment, your choice of dentist will be one of the most important decisions you make.

There are several considerations when finding a dentist. You want to feel confident in his skills as a dentist, as well as his ability to put you at your ease. If you have children, you want to ensure that their pediatric dental care experiences are relaxed and seen as routine, not something to fear.

One of the best ways to find a dentist is to ask around amongst family members, friends, and work colleagues. Word-of-mouth recommendation is an excellent gauge of a dentist’s skills and his relationship with his patients.

Location is a prime consideration when finding a dentist. In an emergency, you will want to get to your dentist as soon as possible.

Local online directory of dentists include the local versions of all the search engines, the Yellow Pages telephone directory has lists of dentists, and Yelp will have them included with reviews of their work and directions to their offices.

Online dental reviews can be very helpful but can also be misleading. Groups of companies have popped up to write favorable reviews for dentists to overcome legitimate bad reviews. Also, it can be a challenge to see if the positive reviews were written by family or office staff. Likewise, bad reviews may have been written by competitors trying to get people to keep looking until they are found.

After reading a few of the many dentist reviews, you'll see trends that indicate if they are legitimate or not. Date ranges on the reviews provide some clues. If 100 reviews were posted in one day and no others were written in the prior 5 years, it's a sign of bogus reviews. Even 100 reviews in a week or two indicate 'bogosity' if all are positive and their are hardly any other reviews to be found on this dentist despite a history of greater than one month. Call a dentist or, even better, go along and see the dental clinic for yourself; you will get a ‘feel’ for the place as soon as you step into the reception area.

Your family doctor is another good source of information; a quick phone call to his reception staff should give you a list of affordable local dentists. Another good place to find the best dentist in your area is to ask the local health authority.

They will have a list of dentists who are currently taking on new patients, and they will also be able to direct you to care in the event of an emergency before you have to find a local dentist of your own.

On the initial visit, just schedule a cleaning and see how they treat you.

1. Never sign on to spend more money at that dentist until you are happy with how they treated you for the cleaning.
2. Did the dentist treat you with respect and respect your feedback while educating you on your options, or did the dentist talk down to you?
3. Did the dentist focus on your care, or did they simply try to up-sell you on other services and products or procedures that are not anything you need?
4. Was the dentist office clean?
5. Did the people in the dentist waiting room or leaving the dentist seem happy with the dentist or mad/disappointed?

If you like what you find, ask to make an appointment for initial check-ups for you and for your family, a price list showing the costs of dental procedures the dentist carries out, his arrangements for out-of-hours care, whether he has an in-house dental hygienist, orthodontist, and dental laboratory, or his dentist referral procedures if not, and how long you are likely to need to wait if you need an emergency appointment. 

Even for patients who need very little in the way of treatment, there will come a time when the answers to all these queries will suddenly become vital.