I had a very brief visit here to follow up on some emergency procedures. Was given very little information about what was wrong with my tooth and what I could do to improve things, and what I needed to do next. This is because 75% of the time in with the dentist was taken up by talk of the price of the next step treatments, and the dentist I saw trying to convince me I needed to go private. Was told that I could choose NHS treatment, but the quality would be worse, the effects would not last as long, and the practitioners would "probably" be less qualified. In fact, their was a high chance the treatment wouldn't work at all - whereas the private version of the *same* treatment in the *same* place would. I left feeling more confused than when I had gone in, more scared, but after a few hours, quite angry that dental care has gotten so poor and uncaring in this country - and seemingly it's all about trying to get as much money out of people as possible. It felt very much like a trick or a spiel to use scare tactics convince me to buy private services of exactly the same treatment. The person 'selling' to me could not look me in the eyes as they reeled it off. I feel for elderly or vulnerable people coming into this practice - it really feels like they will up sell whatever they can, and use scaremongering tactics without any real justification to make people not choose the affordable NHS option. I was also really shocked to see a dentist presenting the NHS option as the worse quality, *risky* option. I've had some amazing NHS dentists in my time - but it's more that that - surely a qualified dentist is a qualified dentist...if they're trained to do a treatment, they've trained to do it? Unless NHS dentists are instructed to do procedures not as well as private? I think not.... This was the one of the only treatments along the way I had to pay for; through the process I'd been to 2 other dentists, A&E, my GPs and a specialist, and all of them had listened to what I had to say, and made me feel like they were trying to do the best for me. This experience made me feel like I was being rushed along and was only worth the amount in my wallet. I ask this practice to rethink it's policies on how it sells it's private services, and to consider retraining its staff so that if they *genuinely* feel that private is the better option they explain *why* without making patients feel like cash cows (for all I know the dentist I saw may well have been correct, and private may have been the best option - but they didn't convince me or offer me any firm reasoning why that might be!!). I ask patients to tread with care here. On other review sites I've seen similar stories. This is not the first time I've been here and felt this way...it will be the last - I intend to change surgery as soon as I can.
Original Comment Report...