World Kindness Day: why is kindness a key skill for clinicians?

This World Kindness Day, Manrina Rhode discusses why being kind and supportive is a crucial part of a clinician’s day-to-day role – to both colleagues and patients.

Today is World Kindness Day, so let’s talk about being kind.

I don’t think that this talk is going to be particularly around aesthetic dentistry, but around being a clinician as a whole. And I suppose all of us have elements of aesthetic dentistry within our practice.

Being mindful

When a patient comes to see you, they are typically nervous, and we all have our own things going on in life. I believe that, as a clinician, we owe it to our patients to put whatever is happening in our own lives aside and focus on the patient that is in front of you.

Every patient is individual. For them, they’re not in clinic every day like we are. They are coming in, they’re feeling something, they’re feeling emotive. If they’re coming in to see a general dentist, it could be that they are in pain or they have got an issue.

When they’re coming in to see us as aesthetic dentists, typically there’s something that’s been bothering them about about their appearance for some time, and it’s bothered them enough that it’s meant that they’ve come in to do something about it, and they’re nervous.

Changing the way you look is a big commitment, and it’s a scary thing to do. There’s also a price tag associated with that, so it’s an investment that they’re making, that they could be nervous and excited about.

The very best thing that we can do for them every day is to be kind. And being kind means looking at them, seeing them, hearing them, caring, making sure they feel comfortable, making sure they understand that we’re happy to have them here today, and that we’re going to support them through their journey.

How is the patient feeling?

And probably the most important thing that we can do is listen. So, let them speak, don’t interrupt – hear their story and understand who they are and why they have come to see you today, and really have a good understanding about who that person is as a patient.

Once you actually start the treatment, staying in tune with the patient, along with your nurse, is really important. This will make sure that you’re aware that, if they are moving their legs, are they’re uncomfortable in the chair? If they are moving their hands or they have made some noise, is it because something has just happened? We are always very careful to be attentive and kind and to make sure that we are paying attention.

I’m not just trying to get my job done, and I’m not uncaring about how the patient’s feeling – that’s not how we want to treat our patients. We try and be mindful of the temperature in the room. If we need to get them a blanket, we always have one at hand. They are lying there, and sometimes there is some comfort in having a blanket with them.

At the end of treatment, be very kind and understanding about what they have been through. Be supportive and make sure that they know that we are here, we are not sending them away to never hear from them. You want to know that if they have got any questions or there is anything you can help them with, they are more than welcome to contact you.

So, as clinicians, being kind every single day is a massive part of what we do, and so World Kindness Day is just a reminder of that for everyone else. It’s something that we should do on a day-to-day basis.

Be kind to your team

An extension of this is thinking about how we deal with our teams. We are all here together every day, and our teams are here supporting us every day to be the very best that we can be.

Dentistry is a really stressful profession. We have a lot of pressure on us as clinicians to make sure that everything is perfect in a very limited environment. There is no space for error.

We are doing micro surgery every single day, and it’s difficult on our bodies and it’s difficult on our minds, and there is no time or space for our minds to wonder. We need to be switched on, and we need to be aware and controlling our whole environment at every moment of every day, while we’ve got nervous patients in our in our chair with us.

Therefore, it can get very stressful, and there are so many stories that you hear about dentists taking that stress out on their teams, and expecting their team to understand that they are stressed. They’re a clinician, they’re a practice owner, and their lives are stressful, and ‘can you just support me in that stress?’

But sometimes we just need to step back and think, ‘Okay, we’ve got things going on, but they are human beings, and this is where they are every day.’ It is so important to be kind to them, and that we are all working together – we need them just as much as anything. The clinic is not going to function with you by yourself.

I thank my team so often for the kindness, for the coffee that’s waiting for me every morning when I come in, and how I can see that they care. In turn, I want them to know that I care that they are okay, so that, together, we can all support each other and actually really enjoy coming to work every day and helping each other.

So, let’s all take World Kindness Day to take a step back and do a nice thing for someone, but let’s also check and make sure that every day we are being really kind to the patients that we are serving and the team that supports us on a daily basis.

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Visit Manrina’s website here: www.drmrlondon.co.uk.