stress

Six Tips for Dental Professionals to Improve Their Mental Health

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Dental professionals face numerous stressors in their day to day work including reimbursement concerns, practice management issues, financial pressures, paperwork demands, uncooperative patients, physical demands inherent in delivering oral health care, and tightly booked schedules. Dental professionals often have personal characteristics like perfectionism and prioritization of others’ needs that in conjunction with the day to day work stressors can lead to dental professionals vulnerable to distress, burnout, and mental health disorders. This stress endemic is discussed in the article “Anxiety, depression, and the impact on dental health care workers,” written by Maria L. Geisinger and Stacey L. Dershewitz appearing in the Journal of the American Dental Association (vol. 153, no. 8, pp. 734-736, Aug. 01, 2022). The article also discusses how dental professionals can improve identifying and preventing mental health disorders. The authors feel that mental health disorders can have … Read more

Patient Stress Impact on Tooth Extraction Complications

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An interesting article titled “The potential role of patient stress in rates of dental post-extraction complication” written by McDowall appears in the 2014 edition of Oral Surgery (vol. 7, pp. 162-167). The article explores whether stress, alcohol and tobacco use impacts the complication rate experienced after a tooth extraction. The authors recruited patients for the study who were at least 16 years old and having at least one tooth extracted. The patients were asked to fill out questionnaires incorporating the Global Measure of Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Fast Alcohol Screening Test (FAST) and questions related to tobacco use. The PSS consists of fourteen questions designed to determine how stressful the persons life is and higher scores indicated greater perceived stress. The FAST consists of four questions designed to determine the frequency too much alcohol consumption and higher scores indicate … Read more

Listen to Music Before Dental Cleaning to Reduce Anxiety

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An interesting article titled “Effects of Music Listening on Pre-treatment Anxiety and Stress Levels in a Dental Hygiene Recall Population” written by Thoma et al. appears in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 498-505). The article discusses how waiting for a medical procedure can provoke anxiety in patients and lead to stress. In the article the authors perform a study to explore if patients waiting for a dental cleaning can have their anxiety reduced by listening to music. The authors were motivated to perform their study because previous studies have shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety and stress. Other studies in hospital patients has also shown that listening to music prior to surgery reduces anxiety and can do so just as effectively if not better than pharmacological options like benzodiazepines. Furthermore, these prior … Read more

Improving the Mental Health of Oral Surgeons

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Before on this site mental health of dentists has been discussed and particularly addressing mental health issues early on such as during dental education see for example the posts A Counseling Model for Dental Students, Designing a Predoctoral Dental Curriculum To Help With Therapy Issues such as Stress Management and Suicide Prevention, and Medical Students Are At Risk For Suicide. However, many oral surgeons are still afraid to own up to any mental health issues they may have. This is discussed in the editorial titled “Time to change the narrative” appearing in Oral Surgery in 2018 (vol. 11, pp. 97–97). The editorial discusses how oral surgery is increasing a stressful profession. This is because of increasing threats of litigation along with patients increasing having higher expectations of surgical outcomes. The traits that define a good surgeon are those who put … Read more

7 Tips for Dealing with Teeth Grinding

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Dealing with teeth grinding can be a real challenge, but as it’s a problem that can cause headaches, jaw pain and damage to your teeth too, it’s not something that should be ignored. For those that  grind teeth during the day or the night, here are seven tips for how to deal with it and prevent it: Break the Habit Teeth grinding is a habit that may be breakable. The first step is identifying the times when you grind your teeth. This is obviously much easier if you grind your teeth during the day. By making a note of each teeth grinding episode you can start to work out why you grind your teeth. It may be a response to stress or something you do when you’re really concentrating on a task. Once you’ve identified the situations that lead to … Read more