A telling conversation recently was with a colleague of mine where we were discussing the modern fashion now, sticking white filling material onto people’s front teeth to make them look “nice”.
Obviously, you can substitute white filling material for porcelain, or you can straighten the teeth (over a longer period of time) and whiten them.
As a health care professional there are people who come in and ask for that type of treatment, but it is simply not appropriate and it is really important to advise them that is the case.
The difficulty is though, that as me and my colleague explained (rightly) “it is hard not to get sucked in”.
Dentistry is in the unenviable position of having to make money for the work that it does and everything that is outside of the National Health Service.
It is not to say that the NHS Dental Practices don't have to make money, but it is funded in a different model.
If you exist in an area where people have decided that they all want to come in and ask for treatment which you think is bad for their health and then they go down to the practice down the road, your business is going to die and there lays the problem.
Change of ethics or lose your business.
For me I need to be able to sleep at night, so changing my ethics was never an issue, I would rather have less stuff and be able to sleep than have more stuff and be kidding myself on and lay awake in the middle of the night.
Even if it is not my place there will still be enough places to work where people are happy for you to do the thing's that are in the patients best interest instead of the things that is for your own best interest over everything else.
Blog Post Number - 2289
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