True?

‘I want the truth to be said, I want the truth to be known’

True (Gary Kemp)

Readers will be aware of the great amount of hype, fake news and untruths that have been written over the past 10 months regarding the pandemic, arguably none more than across the Atlantic. We are now at a time when we would like to see a return to something like normal, and our patients want that too. A certain way of encouraging them to return to our practices is to reassure them that they are being treated in a safe environment, and that the advice that we give them is believable.

I have previously written that the fastest route to a legal complaint started by a patient is a treatment that has not worked out as promised. Of course, some practitioners will have adapted their computer systems to provide patients with an accurate estimate of how well treatments carried out by that dentist survive, and, for those who have not, perhaps this should be a New Year resolution? It is not possible to cover all treatments under this umbrella, so, it is therefore necessary for the clinician to be able to quote (perhaps not verbatim) from the published literature. However, how can they guarantee that it is believable? The peer-review process is the only way.