Why has patient trust eroded in dentistry and other healthcare fields over the past few decades? Decades of high-profile professional scandals have lowered the baseline trust patients bring into any healthcare setting. The news cycle delivers regular stories of fraud, unnecessary procedures, over-prescription, harmful product exposure, manufacturer kickback arrangements, and outright criminal behavior across medical and dental practices. Patients have absorbed enough of this to arrive at every new professional encounter with a layer of guardedness that did not exist a generation ago. Their own prior bad dental experiences, or those of family members and friends, add to it. The burden [...]

Why has patient trust eroded in dentistry and other healthcare fields over the past few decades? Decades of high-profile professional scandals have lowered the baseline trust patients bring into any healthcare setting. The news cycle delivers regular stories of fraud, unnecessary procedures, over-prescription, harmful product exposure, manufacturer kickback arrangements, and outright criminal behavior across medical and dental practices. Patients have absorbed enough of this to arrive at every new professional encounter with a layer of guardedness that did not exist a generation ago. Their own prior bad dental experiences, or those of family members and friends, add to it. The burden [...]

Why has patient trust eroded in dentistry and other healthcare fields over the past few decades? Decades of high-profile professional scandals have lowered the baseline trust patients bring into any healthcare setting. The news cycle delivers regular stories of fraud, unnecessary procedures, over-prescription, harmful product exposure, manufacturer kickback arrangements, and outright criminal behavior across medical and dental practices. Patients have absorbed enough of this to arrive at every new professional encounter with a layer of guardedness that did not exist a generation ago. Their own prior bad dental experiences, or those of family members and friends, add to it. The burden [...]