Nervous Patients

At the Oatlands Referral Centre we treat nervous patients in a very empathic manner. Our experienced and friendly team endeavour to help patients overcome their anxieties and ease any nervousness before and during their treatment.

As part of our dedication to making patients feel at ease, we promise to:

• Explain procedures – we provide your patient with a report that gives them detailed information on their treatment plan and all procedures involved. They can return to discuss any concerns prior to treatment scheduling. We believe being well informed can help to reduce a patient’s fears.

• Not begin treatments if the patient is in pain. We use anaesthetic to reduce or eliminate pain so the client should not be in discomfort.

• Never rush the patient to begin your treatment. – We will thoroughly and carefully inform you and your patients of our concerns regarding their dental and overall health, but will not hurry their decision to pursue treatment.

• Guide and explain treatment options to the patient.

• Offer comfortable anaesthetic techniques.

• Provide IV sedation options where appropriate to ensure the patient’s comfort during their treatment.

• Our concern your patient’s welfare and our desire to help them to receive the dental care they need means that we will always listen to their concerns, take their fears seriously, and will do all we can do to ensure that they have a positively affirming dental care experience with us.

We encourage patients to tell us if they suffer from anxiety related to dental procedures so that we are able to help them. This nervousness can be from a previous bad experience or simply an inbuilt reaction. At the Oatlands Referral Centre we have plenty of experience treating nervous patients and always handle anxiety with sensitivity and understanding.

This anxiety can be even more severe when a patient is undergoing more in depth treatments such as root canal work so we can offer Intravenous (IV) sedation when requested.

What is Intravenous sedation?

Even when patients know that they will be receiving anaesthetic, some still feel anxious about undergoing treatment so in some cases we will administer intravenous sedation so that they are not conscious during their treatment and are completely relaxed.

Once the patient is sitting comfortably in the dental chair, we will use an extremely thin needle to insert a line in their hand, which will deliver the sedating drugs directly into their blood stream. The tube is made from soft plastic which is lightweight and virtually painless so the patient is hardly aware of it.

The sedation makes the patient feel drowsy and relaxed yet still conscious. We find that some patients even sleep through their treatment. It does mean that the patient will need a friend or relative with them to take them home after surgery, as they will not be able to drive afterwards.

What about the usual local anaesthetic?

The IV drugs do not kill pain, they simply reduce anxiety so we still administer an anaesthetic into the patient’s gum and do not proceed with the treatment until the area is numb. If the patient is adverse to needles, we will wait until they are sedated until administering the anaesthetic or use a numbing gel.

After the treatment the IV will be painlessly removed. The patient will be slightly sleepy but should not have any unpleasant side effects; in fact they might not even be aware that the procedure is completed.

If your patient is at all nervous then let us know and we can discuss the positive elements of IV sedation with them.