Why You Should Love Your ‘Bad’ Patients

Some patients are easy to love. They respect your value, accept your recommendations, pay promptly and are always looking to do the best thing for their oral health and appearance. What's not to love?

Then there are the ones who are more, shall we say, challenging to deal with. The ones who wave away needed treatment, only to return later with more advanced and now-urgent problems. The ones who accept no more than what their insurance will cover, while telling you all about their latest trip to Vegas. The constant re-schedulers who put you behind their hairstylist on their list of calendar priorities–these ones are often harder to love.

But you should love them. You should even be excited about having them as patients because they represent the greatest opportunities you have as a dental professional to make a real difference. When you think about it, those 'perfect' patients are few and far between, and are almost always up to date with their oral health care. There isn't much of an opportunity to educate and move them upward on the scale of value.

On the other hand, the ones who don't value dentistry, the ones who are the source of the most frustration, whose mouths reflect years of minimal dental choices—those are the ones you can change the most. If you are going to experience meaningful growth in the practice, it's probably not going to come from new patients walking in and asking for ideal care. It's going to come from connecting with these so-called 'bad' patients, influencing their thinking, helping them see past their limiting mindsets and taking them to another level.

This is why you became a dentist—to help people like this. Learn to love these patients because that's where the greatest opportunities lie for you and for them.


If you want to learn more about individual patient values and ideals, check out Imtiaz's course on these topics available through our Course Library. Not yet a Digital Suite member? Click here to learn more.