I think we are in a new phase of laser adoption into the profession as a whole. It’s no longer a matter of, “Wow, what a miracle! they finally made a laser for US!. Someday I gotta think about that.”

It’s now gotten to be, “Yea, I know, that other guy down the street is making incredible claims about his laser. They can’t be true, if they were I would have to spend way too much money.”

This is likely the period of “maximum dynamic stress” in the “launch” of lasers into dentistry. The time when there is maximum actual active resistance from practicioners not willing to be jarred out of their comfort zone. And their patients will follow them for a while…until the start hearing about dental lasers from places other than the local “laser cowboy’s” marketing. Places like Oprah, and the like. And magazine articles in women’s magazines.

I feel the burden of bringing lasers and their miracles to the public, but I not only have to educate myself as to their use, I have to educate the public as to their EXISTANCE. That costs money! And it’s discouraging to know that other dentists, (and probably the majority of them now) are actively trying to keep this information from being believed by the public.

We need to all, and myself first, remember that it is still the price of gas which determines when people go to the dentist, not the laser he bought.

I’m determined to change the way I present myself to the patients who do make it into my chair. I’ve progressed a long way down the learning curve now, and I must stop looking like a kid with a new toy, and return to the image of an experienced practicioner, (dare I say it, like Dick Cheney) who has brought this technology for the COMFORT it provides THEM, to the individual person who’s sitting in my chair at that moment.

Apparently an excited dentist, even if he is excited about his laser, comes across as a “nervous nellie” to almost all patients. The patient sees excitement, and that immediately translates into dollar signs in my pupils to them. And that scares them.

Lasers should be presented along with a good measure of your “competence” just now rather than your “agressiveness in buying new things”. I have been doing this wrong myself.

I apologise for leading this forum away from the USE of lasers to the MARKETING of them. But I do think there is a new phase which their adoption has entered into, as I have described above.

Thanks