• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

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New dentist and apprehensive

H

Hobgoblin

Junior member
Joined
Dec 4, 2007
Messages
5
For the last 5 years I've had the same NHS dentist. In all honesty, I wasn't happy with the standard of care - I felt extremely undertreated.

I recently moved so have registered with a new NHS dentist. I have some niggles with my teeth at the moment (sensitivity, mobility of front teeth and other similar things) and am wondering how to bring these things up at my appointment (the list is quite extensive therefore I'd feel silly reeling them out when he asks "is there anything wrong at the moment?"). In addition to this, how can I bring up my severe anxiety (I can't even bring myself to get injected with LA) - would a letter work? The only problem I have with this is that NHS appointments are only 10-15mins and it would probably take the dentist around 5 minutes just to read the letter. Also, I'd imagine I might be seen as a bit weird...

Since I moved from Scotland (cheap/free NHS care) to England the price of NHS care has risen drastically (to the point where it is only £5 more to get examination and fillings done privately); combined with the fact that at some point when I had enough money (poor student on a stipend now) I'd want to get my teeth totally fixed (mostly braces, really), is it worth just going to a private practice?

Sorry for the rambling! :redface:
 
Short answer - yes but not all private dentists are good.

What is your issue with LA? A practice with TheWand could be what you need or just a dentist with atraumatic slow technique depending what your issues are.


You can't get much dental treatment done without needing LA.

You could give the NHS a try and then move on to private if you don't get the answers you want.
If you do use a letter, state what you want the dentist to do to help after reading on here in the Common Fears section. Saying you can't have LA doesn't really work. You need to find a way to get LA comfortably so you can get pain-free treatment.
 
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