When it Comes to Your Smile, White is Always in Style!

Don't wait for your patients to ask about whitening - Take the initiative.  With the right verbal skills and tact, you can present whitening to your patients in a way that won't offend even the most sensitive person.  Whitening is a great way to bring revenue into your practice with little or no doctor time and is a simple way to change a person's smile and instantly boost their self-confidence.  Below are some helpful hints on how to start a conversation about whitening with your patients.

1.) When checking the shade for a composite or crown, ask you patient if they have any plans to whiten their teeth in the near future so you can select the shade accordingly.

2.) If your patient has a beautiful smile - tell them! Ask if they would like to enhance it even more by whitening their teeth.

3.) Have a special offer in your office.  Print up coupons for your patients and hand them out.  Summer is a great time for a whitening special - many people are getting married or graduating.

4.) Ask your patient if they have any cosmetic concerns or if they had the opportunity, would they change anything about their smile  - most say color.

5.) If someone says, "I never thought about whitening" - take out the shade guide and ask them what shade they think matches the color of their teeth.  Most of the time, people think their teeth are several shades lighter than they actually are.  With a hand mirror, show them the shade they selected against their teeth.  You can also show them a lighter shade they could potentially be after whitening.

After seeing the difference in shade and looking in the mirror, many patients will schedule for in-office whitening.  If possible, offer to take the alginate impression for the whitening trays the same day. If offered in your office, outside financing is a great way to make in-office whitening procedures very affordable.  In fact, with Care Credit, our patients can break our whitening fee down into twelve affordable monthly payments.  These payments are actually less than the cost of some premium whitening strips sold over-the-counter, and of course, the results will last much longer.

For details on fabricating whitening trays, please see Diva Tips.

How to Make a Great Provisional (AKA temporary crown)

We use bite registration material  and a 2x2 gauze to take a pre-op impression.  By using the bite registration instead of alginate, you will have the impression available if you would need to remake the patient's temporary crown before his or her scheduled delivery date.  Using this technique also saves on the inventory budget and scheduled "chair time" for re-makes. 

Steps:

1.) Dispense the bite registration onto the 2x2 gauze in the form of a thick line.  Keep in mind you will need enough material to cover at least one adjacent tooth on each side of the tooth that is being restored. 

2.) Quickly mold the material onto the three teeth you are going to capture in the impression.  Place it directly on the incisal/occlusal surfaces and evenly mold it to the buccal and lingual surfaces, creating an exaggerated "U" shape.  

3.) Allow the bite registration to fully set in the mouth. 

4.) After the tooth has been prepped for the veneer, crown, or onlay, dispense the acrylic temporization material (We like Protemp Plus) into the pre-op impression and place the impression in the mouth until nearly set. (For most materials, 1 min and 10 sec usually allows the material to be flexible enough to easily remove excess from the impression and adjacent teeth.)

5.) Place your temporary crown back onto the tooth until it has fully set.  Check the bite with articulating paper and adjust if necessary.

6.) Carefully trim the margins and contacts and taper towards the gingival margin.  Be careful not trim too much - you do not want a temporary without interproximal contacts.  (If you are temporizing more than one tooth, and your provisional crowns will be connected, you must trim the contact and embrasures properly to allow a "triangle" for the interdental papilla.  If you skip this important step, the tissue may be traumatized and become blunted.)

7.) "Rough" the inside surfaces of the temporary crown with a slow speed hand piece and a diamond bur.  By taking away the air-inhibited layer on the inside, the cement will adhere to the temporary better.  Again, be careful not to ream out the inside - you just want to gently remove a thin layer and rough the surface.

8.) If a build-up was placed, apply a glycerin gel (We like Ivoclar Vivadent's "Liquid Strip.") to the build-up only, before using temporary cement. This will prevent the cement from adhering to the build-up instead of the tooth. 

9.) Cement the temporary crown, remove marginal excess, and be sure the patient can floss between the interproximal contacts.  ( We like Dent Zar, Inc.'s "Olympian-M" temporary cement.)

Don't ever say, " I'm just a dental assistant."

You may be wondering how this blog could be useful to you or how you could benefit from reading our posts or actively participating by giving us feedback. We want to clarify our purpose for creating this blog.  There are numerous resources out there for dentists and hygienists to network and share ideas with each other for things that do and don't work in their practices.  Sadly, there are practically no resources for assistants.  We are an important part of the dental team and equally need to network and support each other to lead a productive and satisfying career in the dental field.

Dental assisting is anything but boring! It would be boring if all you're doing is suctioning spit!  If you're bored as an assistant, we want you to ask yourself why.  Think about what roles and responsibilities you could take on to challenge yourself and help make your doctor happy and  the practice as a whole become more productive. Your role as an assistant is much more important than just suctioning and assisting your doctor during restorative procedures.  You are the one person in the practice who really knows your doctor best.  You spend the most time with him/her by working side-by-side - all day, everyday.  If you're good at what you do, they know and appreciate that.  But now it's time to take it a step further. 

Is your doctor making the temporary crowns for your patients?  Is he or she the one to discuss and present treatment plans to your patients?  Who is doing the whitening procedures in your office?  If the answer is your doctor - why?  Each of you is fully capable of doing each of these tasks.  Depending on your state's laws, if you are an EFDA (expanded function dental assistant), you could be placing direct restorations and sealants.  There are so many roles we play as a dental assistant and we want to reveal those in detail to you in the near future.  Taking on these responsibilities will alleviate stress on your doctor, free up your schedule, allow your practice to become more profitable, possibly increase your paycheck, and most importantly, you will have more fun at work!

So remember, you're not "just a dental assistant."  We have the advantage of having a close relationship with our doctor and our patients.  As we continue to post information, please share your comments and your helpful hints.  Through our different experiences and dental education, we all have something to share and learn from each other.