Our first visit was great, we took our 11 yr old for the initial exam & cleaning. Dr. Hodgins spent a lot of time with her/us. The place is very nice and clean and staff was very friendly. There were a few other patients in the waiting room, but nothing overwhelming. Dr. Hodgins examined our daughter and said that she had a cavity in one of her baby teeth (it has a deep cavity and could possibly stay in her mouth for another year); which would either require a route canal or would have to be extracted. We scheduled another visit three weeks later.
The second visit, the staff was not as friendly! We had scheduled the appointment for a Thursday afternoon. The waiting room was busy when we arrived and a lot of the patients had to stand while waiting for the doctor to catch up on his appointments. Finally we were escorted to a room and the assistant was very nice. She spent some time trying to talk to our child and get her ready for the extraction. After not having much luck, assistant excused herself and said that if our child would not sit in the chair and relax, "the doctor would not be able to do the extraction". She returned about ten minutes later and was extremely rude; telling us that our child was not acting normal and should not be so upset about the procedure. I'm over 30 yrs old, never had an extraction in my life, I would be just as nervous (if not more nervous) as she was!
Finally Dr. H came in (he was simultaneously seeing patients in different rooms), he tried talking to our child, asking her questions, (now, I admit that my daughter wasn't very verbal or communicative due to her fear and anxiety (as well as her shyness). After a few minutes he became impatient and said he had other patients to see; that he would give us some time to talk to her and would come back in a few minutes. His next patient, who happened to be right next door to us, he was a little boy, about 8 yrs old.
We could hear Dr. H working on him,( I believe he also had an extraction done) he was screaming and crying out in pain obviously. This obviously did not help calm our child, so we ended up leaving. The assistant wasn't concerned about our problem; or trying to refer us to a pediatric dentist (which Dr. H mentioned to us in the room). She seemed happy to "get rid of us".
I felt like being in a factory, on an assembly line. In our opinion, he isn't really equipped to see children, he is not a pediatric dentist. I feel as if he should've asked more questions BEFORE we scheduled the app., had we told him about our child being nervous and more needy, they could've scheduled her for a less busy day maybe, or could've referred her to a pediatric dentist from the get go. There wasn't even a follow up phone call from the dentist office. I guess Dr. H can afford to loose patients .Not what I expected, not very professional. We are currently looking for a pediatric dentist AND an adult dentist for us. read more