I don't know if there are any dentists on the board but I wonder how you all feel about your dentist.I have yet to find a dentist that I like.The last one was extremely slow.The last time I went to see him I was in the waiting room for 2 and 1/4 hours(yes,I had an appointment)!! Even after I got in the chair,I still had to wait another 20 minutes.This is especially bad because I am a real coward when it comes to dentists!It doesn't help that my piddly dental insurance is almost useless,either.Has anyone else had such experiences?

Damn Eddie, sorry to hear about that experience. Maybe its time to shop around for a new one?. I have never had to wait more than say 15 minutes max. after an appointment to get into the char, and usually its just minutes after that the Dentist comes in...
Good "chairside" manners are very important with me. A good Dentist is communicative and explains things completely, and in an understanding manner. Those qualities are very important as far as I am concerned.

I used to work in a dental office for two years, my first "real" job too, as a dental assistant, handling mostly x-rays, disinfection, and post-procedure cleanup. Knowing the situations that I know, I could probably chalk up the long wait to a difficult patient or to an emergency patient, who probably hadn't been to the dentist in a long time. Unfortunately, bad things do happen in a dental office.

As for one difficult patient story, there was one that I sat chair-side for. She was diabetic, having noted that on her health questionnaire. (Yes, as an assistant, I did look at those extremely carefully, as many of my former colleagues do also.) We had scheduled her for an 8:30 appointment to have fillings put in. Unfortunately, she woke up late and came right to the office, not having eaten. Well, that minor detail came back to haunt her. She started to feel faint immediately after getting the numbing shot. She didn't have her insulin with her and we weren't exactly stocked with it either. The dentist then asked me to run to get a 7UP from the vending machine in the office next door. She drank it up and after half an hour, she began to feel more like herself, as she put it. All of this was pretty exciting and scary. Chalk this up as one difficult patient. Yes, plenty goes on behind the scenes from what you might see in the waiting room. However, that was not a common occurrence and we kept a pretty tight schedule.

If we ran 15 minutes over into the next patient's appointment, we offered them a new appointment or the choice to wait. If we went over by 30 minutes, the dentist himself came out to explain to his next patient. Only once did that not satisfy the waiting patient. So, it was a very effective business practice to keep a patient satisfied. I wish more would pick up on that small but meaningful practice though.

My advice to you, Eddie, is to get in touch with a dental referral service. They have ads all over the place, but they are quite useful, as I have found my last two dentists in this manner.

[ August 19, 2006, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: UCLAfan ]

I had a bad dentist experience three years ago and am paying for it right now. I have to have a root canal this monday, my first and hopefully my last. My whole head and mouth are throbbing...it sucks.
Three years ago, this russian lady, the daughter of the head dentist at Metro Dental in lower pacific heights/SF, couldn't properly numb me for a crown, my first and only. After something like six novacaine shots, I was sweating, nauseous and about to lose it. Of course I never went back and now the crown is loose, the infection underneath demands a root canal. Luckily I'm going to a Dr. Bronson on Union St. who's supposed to be terrific for this sort of thing. But meanwhile, it's a real pain in the ass during work and while trying to sleep.
I'd never had a bad dentist experience, never feared it, etc. Now I'm just wary - but I'll get over it, I hope.