I never expected to become the patient in this story.
For more than forty years, I was the one making diagnoses, recommending treatment, and helping people make decisions they hoped they would never have to make.
Then one day, I found myself sitting in the other chair.
A urologist recommended that I undergo a prostate biopsy.
The recommendation was presented with confidence.
It sounded urgent.
It sounded definitive.
And before I knew it, an informed consent form was sitting in front of me.
The conversation moved so quickly that I didn’t feel I had the opportunity to process my concerns or ask all the questions that were running through my mind.
I wasn’t physically forced to sign.
But I felt verbally overpowered.
I wanted to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation.
So I signed the consent.
As I walked to my car, something didn’t sit right.
The more I replayed the conversation in my mind, the more unsettled I became.
I found myself wondering whether the procedure was truly necessary.
I wondered whether my concerns mattered as much as the procedure itself.
Most of all, I realized something I had never fully appreciated before.
Whether the doctor’s intentions were exactly as I perceived them almost didn’t matter.
What mattered was how I experienced the conversation.
Fortunately, I sought additional opinions.
Those opinions changed my medical decision.
But the experience changed me.
For the first time in my career, I wasn’t thinking like a dentist.
I was thinking like a patient.
And it forced me to ask one of the most uncomfortable questions of my professional life.
Had I ever made one of my own patients feel the way I felt that day?
Not intentionally.
Not because I cared more about production than people.
But because I was busy.
Confident.
Certain.
Or so convinced I was right that I unintentionally stopped listening.
I hope the answer is no.
But I can no longer say with certainty that it never happened.
That experience fundamentally changed the way I think about trust.
Patients don’t hesitate because they don’t understand dentistry.
They hesitate because they’re trying to answer a far more important question:
“Can I trust this person with my health?”
That question has very little to do with crowns, implants, or root canals.
It has everything to do with whether patients feel heard.
Whether they feel respected.
Whether they believe we understand their fears before we explain our recommendations.
Trust isn’t built when we present treatment.
It’s built long before we present treatment.
And that’s why I’ve come to believe something that now guides the way I teach, coach, and think about our profession.
Patients don’t buy crowns, implants, aligners, or veneers.
They buy confidence in the person recommending them.
