Understanding Dental Complaints

Contents

Nobody likes to receive complaints, but our ability to respond to them constructively, and to learn any lessons that they provide for us, can make a big contribution to the success of any practice.  In addition to helping us to understand the causes of complaints and thereby to avoid them, this video aims to make us think differently about complaints, describing practical ways to transform complaints from a threat into an opportunity and to manage them really effectively.

Learning Objectives

This video aims to help participants to understand:

• The factors that influence satisfaction and dissatisfaction with dental services
• Why some people complain, when others don’t, what people are looking for when they complain and what makes some people taken things further
• The potential for different kinds of situation to trigger complaints
• The features of effective in-house complaints systems
• The essential “do’s” and “don’t’s” of complaint handling

This talk satisfies the GDC’s learning outcome:

• A – Effective communication with patients, the dental team, and others across dentistry, including when obtaining consent, dealing with complaints, and raising concerns when patients are at risk

Speaker

Dr Kevin Lewis BDS FDS RCS SFGDP(UK) LDS RCS, Dental Director, Dental Protection Limited (DPL)

Kevin Lewis qualified from The London Hospital in 1971.  He spent 20 years in full time general dental practice and 10 further years practising part time.  He became involved in the dento-legal field in 1989, firstly as a member of the Board of Directors of Dental Protection, then (1992) as a full time dento-legal adviser and since 1998 as Dental Director.  He became a member of the Council (Board of Directors) of the Medical Protection Society in 2003 and is a member of the senior management team of MPS. For 25 years from 1981 to 2006, Kevin was the Associate Editor of Dental Practice. He is now the Consultant Editor of Dentistry. He has written two textbooks on dental practice management. He writes and lectures regularly all over the world, including this year’s FDI World Dental Congress in Mexico this being his 8th FDI appearance since 1995.