First off, the dental technician was not fluent in English. I had difficulty understanding her (mind you, both my parents are Chinese immigrants, so if anyone would be understanding..)
She hurt my mouth several times during x-rays (I teared up a few times and even asked her to take the thing out and reposition. Note - In 37 years, I have never asked the technician to reposition the "xray bite-down thingy," as I have a high tolerance for pain. And the really good technicians can position them in such a way that does not cause ANY pain).
The dentist, herself, was challenged when verbalizing analysis of my xrays to the technician - the technician could NOT understand "dental jargon", and was unable to efficiently make notes to my patient record/file without constant help/supervision by the dentist.
After the challenging xray experience, the technician sat down with a 3-D model of a human mouth and "Instructed" me on how to floss and brush properly. I emphasize the word "Instruct" because I just discovered that I was charged $33 for (and i quote directly from my 'HDS Explanation of Benefits' that just came in the mail) "Oral Hygiene Instruction". Please note that I am 37 yo, never had a cavity, never had braces, pretty much as perfect a mouth as one can have by genetics. Was she using any discretion in deciding who she "Instructs" on oral hygiene? Or was she trained to just blindly offer this $33 service to everyone?
The dentist offered to perform my cleaning, thank GOD. (Seriously, thank you, God.) I was this close to jumping out of my chair and running for the elevator, if my technician had picked up the Dental Pick.
During the cleaning, my dentist kept getting distracted by some commotion over her shoulder. Someone was screaming/squealing and hopping around behind us. Laying there, mouth wide open, dental pick and mirror hovering, dentist's head turned 120°, commotion in the background......wtf? It was a gecko. And the dentist was trying, calmly, to convince the technician not to kill it.
In summary, and to be fair, I can't criticize the dentist's work itself, but the overall experience was lackluster, to say the least. read more