The Next Appointment

Last week, one of our orthodontic patients was happy with her results and wanted her braces out.

For the removal of braces, patients are usually given two appointments:

1. The first appointment to remove the braces, take post treatment x-rays and photos, clean the teeth and do any necessary restorations. Finally, we take a mould of the teeth and this is used to make the retainers. The mould is taken at the end of the appointment to ensure a good fit of the retainers because if we take the mould before restoring the teeth, the mould will not be accurate and the resulting retainers will not fit well.
2. One week later, the retainers are fitted for the patient

For patients that are having their braces out, we try to give them an appointment the following week.

However, in this case, we were not able to co-ordinate the appointments between the orthodontists and the other clinicians. The orthodontist was available but the other clinicians were booked out till the third week of October. Mum was not too thrilled about that and she made that very clear to us.

We reassured mum that we would explore the following options for the patients:

1. we would possibly have a last minute cancellation but this would mean that the patient was going to get a rather short notice of her appointment.
2. we could ask one of the off duty clinicans if they could come in specially just for this patient.

Well, yesterday, as we were confirming patients for Friday's appointments, two patients who had one-hour appointments cancelled. This is usually not acceptable but in this case, it worked in this particular patient's favour.

Our front office contacted the orthodontic patient and arranged for her to come in on Friday to remove her braces. Mum is now satisfied.