Authentic Patient Connection (Dental Confidence and Connection Course)

All right, welcome back. We are going to talk today about our first key point, and that is the word connection. So the five C's are first connection, then communication, collaboration, confidence, and choice. The pinnacle of the first four, the point of all four of them coming together. There are different types of connections now, and they all build on one another. Let's talk first about the commencing connection. Now, this is the first impression that we make with our patients. Subconsciously, any connection that we make with anybody is going to yield two things. Number one, can I trust you as a human being? And number two, are you competent as a dentist? So we need to make a human impression prior to making a professional impression, in most cases, except for, you know, these emergencies where we don't have time to do that, which is very rare. But this is a person-to-person connection. We want to do our best to eliminate barriers when we're doing this. I'd suggest to sit down face-to-face, rather than side-by-side, or rather than with the patient laying down. Take off the mask, take the loops off, slide around in front of the patient, so you're actually able to make eye contact, and make a human connection with them. Remember, connection is bi-directional. We have to give and take. We have to share and ask. Remember to spend unhurried time to the other humans, with the other humans that you're interacting with. It reminds me of a quote from Neal A. Maxwell. Somehow, giving unhurried time is a greater gift, even if the minutes or hours are technically the same. So 45 seconds of quality, unhurried connection, human connection, pre-dental connection, is critical. So that's the first connection. Let's talk about the second type of connection, the continued connection. This is the second connection. You need to maintain the perception of actual trust and factual competence. Remember, those are those two things that happen when we're first making a connection with someone. Trust and competence need to be evaluated. And this comes down to our attitude and our demeanor. How we communicate with the staff, with the team, with the haters. Remember from the movie Matilda that perception is nine-tenths of the law. Right? Perception is critical. Even if we're amazing communicators, amazingly compassionate and loving, if we don't, if our patients don't perceive that, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't help, right? So the final connection is the concluding connection. This is often the most powerful type of connection and yields the most loyal and connected patients and individuals. We have to follow up afterwards. Oftentimes for procedural, procedural patients, you know, a follow-up call or a text or something like that. We want them to understand that they can trust us. The connection transfer needs to now happen. As we've developed it personally, we have to transfer that trust to others during care and after care. That's dental assistance for an office team. We'll talk a little bit more about that. They need to understand our compassion for them and it needs to be quality and authenticity in our compassion that we share and it needs to be genuine. People are smart. People are very smart. They can perceive if we're being disingenuous. This type of connection needs to be circular, leading the patients who are leading to patients who are moving forward with prescribed as opposed to diagnosed, and we'll talk about that a little bit, prescribed treatment who are returning, reviewing, and referring their family, friends, and co-workers. Now some connections, as we're working on these with our patients, are immediate and they can become very deep. Some connections are slow and shallow or maybe deep down the road and some connections never come and you know what? That's totally okay. Let's remember the rule of thirds. Third parts, right? Some will always say yes to at least something. Some will always say no to almost everything and the rest, that other third, are on the fence and we are working on potentially winning them over to our side through these processes so we can help them move forward with dental treatment we have prescribed. So we do the best that we can to genuinely, authentically, and compassionately connect with our patients. Otherwise, what is all this for, right? Connecting with our patients is absolutely critical.