Tips to follow to gain confidence for students attending a patient for the first time

Dental Students who pass out of Pre Clinical departments and enter the clinical Departments are in a very frightened state imagining what to do and how to face the patient. Doing a case on a Dummy Model is different and working on a patient is all together a different experience.

So here are some tips which i think will be helpful for Students to gain confidence when they enter Clinical Postings:

1. Be confident – Believe in yourself that you can make a difference

• The first and foremost thing which you should make sure is you are confident enough to face the Patient, because all these days you were face to face with a lifeless model which will not have any expectations from you
• But from now on you will be facing a person with a problem who has hope in you that you are the one to be relieving him of his suffering.
• So you have to be confident and make sure they have confidence in your treatment.
• If the patient does not believe in you and does not have confidence in your treatment, then even if you do the worlds perfect restoration or scaling or denture the patient will not be satisfied with your treatment if he does not have confidence in your treatment.

2. Make sure you know what you are doing

• The problem every patient faces is different from one another.
• You should be perfect theoretically in the clinical case which you are going to attend and be spontaneous to make changes according to the demands of the situation.
• For example if you are doing a restoration you should know everything about what you are doing theoretically and implement it practically in the patient.

3. Be ready to Listen and Understand the patients Problem

• The patient’s problem will not be similar to what is given in the book there will be variations and you as a doctor should have the potential to understand the situation and act accordingly.
• Listen to what the patient has to say, because patients words are the best way to understand and diagnose the problem he is suffering from.

4. Give importance to the patients problem:

• The patient will be having many problems which you know must be treated immediately, but you have to first treat the problem for to which the patient has come to you.
• You have to give first importance to the problem the patient is suffering from and for which he has come to you, you have to first treat that problem and later explain to him/her about the other problems they are suffering from and which you think must be attended to.
• This way you will be satisfying the patient by relieving his immediate problem and then explaining him about the other problems will give him a positive impression about you as a doctor.

5. Maintain proper Steralization and Hygiene:

• Maintenance of proper sterilization and hygiene are very important while you are attending a patient, in pre-clinical you never had to worry about the different kinds of contagious diseases which will spread from patient to patient or patient to Doctor or Doctor to patient. 
• Maintain proper Steralization – Use only sterilized instruments on the patient.
• Always wear Gloves and Mouth mask to prevent transfer of any contagious diseases from Patient to Doctor.For Ex: Hep-B, Herpes are very common in Patient to Dentist transferable diseases.
• Always wear a Mouth Mask: This is very important as the aerosols formed during treatment of the patient are very good carriers of micro-organisms causing many diseases for Ex: Hep-B
• Wear Glasses: There are special glasses available for dentists to wear during cavity preparation or tooth preperation or whenever the use of Aerator Hand piece is present to prevent the aerosols from entering into your eye and causing infections. This is also a path of transportation of diseases.

6. Never feel ashamed to ask your Professors/Seniors for help when you find any situation difficult:

• As you are dealing a live human being you cannot take chances or experiment on him if you don’t know anything about what you are doing. So immediately take help of your Seniors or Professors if you find any problem or difficulty in dealing with the case.
• We are there to give the best treatment to the patient, so we should not experiment on him/her.
• We can also be sued if we do any mistakes and will be a very his penalty for us in this early stage of our career.
• So remember only one thing we have to give the best treatment to the patient and you should not be ashamed to take the help of your seniors or professors in case of any difficulty.