What helps you feel heard at a doctor’s appointment, and how do you speak up when a recommendation leaves you unsure?
In this episode of Not Just a Dentist, clinical psychologist and performance coach Dr. Jonathan Fader joins Dr. Rob Raimondi and Dr. Marc Sclafani to explore the relationship between patients and the people caring for them.
Drawing on his work in psychology and professional sports, Dr. Fader talks about listening as a skill that can be practiced. The conversation explores open-ended questions, the impulse to jump straight to a solution, and what it means to give someone your full attention. Rob and Marc share how those ideas show up in dental care, where trust, comfort, and clear communication are part of the appointment.
For patients, the discussion offers language to bring into the room: “Can you help me understand that choice?” and “Why would you recommend that?” The group considers why people hesitate to question an expert, how clinicians can invite participation, and why a patient’s preferences matter when weighing treatment options.
They also discuss bringing online research into a conversation, sharing questions ahead of an appointment, and recognizing whether a practice feels like the right fit. The final part of the conversation looks at dental anxiety, acknowledging delays or mistakes, and closing a visit with clear instructions and room for questions. It ends with a personal discussion of trust, empathy, and what the hosts and Dr. Fader hope their patients remember about them. Throughout, the focus is on a partnership where clinical expertise and the patient’s own experience both have a place.
Jonathan Fader, PhD, is a clinical and performance psychologist and co-founder of Union Square Practice. His work includes motivational interviewing and performance coaching, and he previously served as a sport psychologist for the New York Mets and New York Giants.
Guest profile: https://unionsquarepractice.com/clinician/jonathan-fader-phd/
Guest website: https://jonathanfader.com/
Performance coaching: https://strataperformance.com/
Book mentioned: Life as Sport, by Jonathan Fader.
This conversation is for educational purposes and does not replace individualized medical, dental, or mental health advice.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Rob Raimondi, prosthodontist and co-founder of One Manhattan Dental in New York City.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: And I’m Dr. Marc Sclafani, also a prosthodontist and the other co-founder of One Manhattan Dental. In each episode, we’ll bring more than five decades of combined experience to help you understand how great dentistry can support your health, longevity, and quality of life. From full mouth reconstruction and cosmetic dentistry to prevention, technology, and oral systemic health, our goal is simple, to show why dentistry is never just about teeth. Because this is Not Just a Dentist.
Hey guys, Dr. Fader, I’m Marc. Hi Rob. You know, trying to think about this intro,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: it’s easy and impossible because we’ve been talking about this and thinking about this exact topic for longer than I even know, right, months together, but our whole life independently. And so we’re here to communicate what the relationship between a patient doctor means and the things around that, what we want patients and doctors to know and think about going into it, maybe some things to avoid to help make sure that relationship is successful as it can be for each part of the relationship. So we’re sitting here with Dr. Jonathan Fader,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: clinical psychologist, performance coach, former coach of the New York Mets, the New York Giants, the practice here in New York City and beyond, and having someone very important to me, helps me with my everything. So thank you for that, and thank you for being here with us today.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: No, it’s a unique opportunity to talk about it, and I’m excited to talk with you, Rob, because you and I both overlap, as is Marc, with thinking about how the relationship is so important between doctors and patients. And, you know, even talking about this before we came in, like this interest about how patients can be empowered more than they think. There’s so many kind of secrets behind how a patient could be empowered to change their whole healthcare.
So I’m excited to talk to you about it. We’re excited to have you here. You mentioned to me
Host: earlier, expert in communication with patients. I think that’s important to us. Can you elaborate on us how we can, the communication, how important that is? And maybe talk about your experience that led you up to this moment here also. Tell everyone about kind of your journey.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was just talking to Marc about this. I started out at LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts here in New York City, the fame school. There’s a movie fame about it. And everybody like has this image of kids dancing on the tables, and we actually did dance on the tables. I was a drama major, so I didn’t dance very well, but we did dance on the tables. You know, during that process, I became fascinated with what makes people go from good to great. I saw people who were at that high school who were immensely talented, like hugely talented, and didn’t really work out. And they saw the people that were talented that became Adrian
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Brody, Sarah Paulson, you know, people who are Timothée Chalamet, people who just really excelled. And I became curious, like what makes people able to realize their talent? And so I pursued a PhD in clinical and performance psychology and ended up working in baseball for about 15 years. And during that time, it became clear to me that the same tools and techniques that people can use in these sports to be great, are applicable to being a doctor, to being a dentist, to being a human, a parent, a sister, brother, wife, husband. And so I’m
Dr. Jonathan Fader: fascinated by that. And I’m fascinated about it when it comes to how people learn how to tell their story, how to communicate, how to get through to another person, how to help another
person change. Would you describe to someone who could be studying to be a great actor,
Host: maybe not a great communicator, where if you look at that as a doctor, you can have excellent hand skills, but to relay that to treating a patient and communicating with a patient and coming up with a relationship with a patient, I think communication is very important to us.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Well, I mean, that’s interesting, because I got a question for you too. You two have an immensely successful practice at One Manhattan. What do you think are the factors about you two that have people wanting to come to this practice?
So many, Rob, right? We could talk about…
Dr. Rob Raimondi: You know, if I were to try to help a young associate, and I want to hear your thoughts on this too, a young associate, and what do you need to walk into the room with? I think that what I’ve learned from myself that has worked, and I see it from Marc also, is that we start with taking care of ourselves, and that’s not just like, oh, I got a good night’s sleep, I worked out. It’s also taking care of who you have to be in that room with that patient. So I think that it starts for me with clinical excellence. So I need to make sure that
Dr. Rob Raimondi: what I’m doing, I am as confident as I can be that it’s the best thing possible for that person in that moment. I walk into that room with that framing before I can meet the patient where they are, understand what their needs and wants are, and get to know them better so I can represent them. I’m trying to go into there with very little baggage and absolute preparation. I think that’s something that makes me feel more comfortable and more clean and calm in the room, and confident for that moment when I’m talking with somebody,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: there’s not a lot of baggage in that situation. I’m also detaching myself emotionally from any baggage I could have in it. So for example, when I first bought my practice in 2010-11, I financially was in a not a great place by a lot of measures of what that means. I instantly said to myself, I will never attach my need for financial success to sustain this business and what happens in a room with a patient. I made a conscious decision to,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I will never equate a patient needing or wanting to do treatment with the financial reward for my practice. We’ll detach that from day one. So just going into that relationship, as clear-minded and confident, as clean as possible, for me gives me the opportunity to build vertically above that foundation. But it has to start for any young professional or anybody who’s taking care of another human. You have to be there to serve.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Yeah. Well, I’m curious about you, Marc, but what I heard too is, one, it just starts with being fantastic, technically what you do. But I also heard you doing something that people do in high performance, which is separating the process and the outcome. Saying like, yeah, of course, every practice needs to be financially successful. But what I’m most concerned about is, do we have an excellent process? Are we doing good work? But the last thing you heard, I’m curious about you, Marc, is about finding a way to not let baggage come into the room. And I think that’s interesting from a perspective of
Dr. Jonathan Fader: how you are high-performer. How about you?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: I think it starts with the clinical excellence. Rob and I both have the same training. When we go to higher associate, we find someone with similar training. So it starts with the clinical excellence. So let’s put that behind us. We all know how to do the dentistry. Now, going into the room to be prepared for a patient, you have to be a great listener. You have to put your ego down, sit there and listen to the patient. Not coming into the room with baggage. I think not coming in stress. Things are on my mind. I think if a doctor takes better care of himself, he’s going to take better care of the patient. It starts with eating and working
Dr. Marc Sclafani: out, possibly, and sleeping and all the above. But it’s being organized. It’s like a young kid going to school for the first day and he didn’t do his homework. He’s not prepared. If I walk into the room and I’m not prepared, I’m not sure how I’m going to treat the patient, it’s going to compromise the outcome of the patient. So I come into the room with a clear head, nothing on my mind but the patient. I think that’s going to result in a better outcome.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: For me, the single most important factor, I would say, in being successful in any domain is listening. I think in almost anything, business, parenting, teaching, being a great doctor, being a successful patient or getting the most out of care, I think you name the number one skill that people have a hard time with and actually don’t know the science of, don’t know the practice of. Everybody says, be a great listener or I
Dr. Jonathan Fader: should listen. But I think very few people understand the actual science and mechanics of listening well. So I really appreciate you highlighting that.
Host: It’s important. It’s easy to walk in the room and a patient has a broken tooth and you’re going to fix it instead of listening first and seeing what the patient’s needs are. Maybe it’s more than that one tooth, maybe that tooth has broken five times and the patient just wasn’t spoken to properly and wasn’t discussed a proper treatment plan. So yeah,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I have to agree that listening is number one. So what would you tell a physician or doctor, a psychologist who’s listening to this and they care so much about their patients? Where’s a great place to start? Because a lot of them, look, we can talk about our situation. We’ve worked very hard to be where we are, but we are positioned in an environment that’s, dare I say, easy to listen to a patient. We’ve structured our life so much to do that. You have a very hard, small set of patients that you take on 15 at a time, no more. Marc and I
Dr. Rob Raimondi: have a limited amount of time and we control that through our practice. But a lot of young people or people out there who’s at a breaking point in their time, in their practice is like, I’m getting frustrated by the system. Where would you say they could start to be able to be more present or be a better doctor, be a better listener with a human and how can they work
that skill in a moment where the system is allowing it? I think a lot of people who may
Host: be listening to this are stuck in a hospital system and they’re told that they only have 15 minutes per patient, situations like that. What advice would you have for them?
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I’ll use an example about this, which has to do with exercise. One of the things that changed my life was the introduction of the idea of an exercise snack. Changed my life. I used to think the only way to exercise is you have to have half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour to exercise. If not, it’s not worth it. Then this idea of this exercise snack was introduced to me years ago. The idea is you can exercise for three minutes, for six minutes, for seven minutes.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: In fact, when I was in baseball, sometimes all I had was seven minutes exercise. I had a little app on my phone. I just did seven minute exercises. Sometimes I did 14 if I had. We as humans, we gravitate to all-or-nothing thinking. Either the system allows me to listen or the system allows me not to listen, rather than saying, what is the one small action I could do? Let’s say I’m in a practice or I’m in a situation where I only have five minutes. Great. What if you say,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I’m going to ask one question to every person I see today? Not just any question, but what we call in communication skills an open-ended question. I’m going to make sure I ask a question to every person I see today. That’s a question of what, why, or how. Even coming in today, I met a lot of amazing people on the One Manhattan staff and I was asking one question. What is it like to move offices? How is it for you to live in a new office that you just, just something to deepen the connection of the relationship? Fundamentally, in life, people want to feel connected and
Dr. Jonathan Fader: understood. Even just by asking one question like that, you’re changing the relationship. People make deals where they say it’s all or none. I don’t have time, so I’m not going to do it at all. Just like exercise, I don’t have time, I’m not going to do it at all. But look, like exercise, losing weight is all about calories in, calories out, and exercise or not. Any minor change you do to put money in the bank, as far as listening, is hugely
positive for relationships. I agree with that. Sometimes it may be a small step. You can pay
Host: it to working out. You may only have five minutes to work out, but I think it leads to bigger steps. If you keep putting it off, putting it off, you’re never going to get there.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Wait, I’m too excited. I just have to say one more thing because you guys got me pumped. You just made me think of something. When I used to train physicians like full-time, one of the things that I saw is that people go into the room, and they would say, I don’t have time. And you could see immediately when they go in the room, I would say, hey, maybe you should ask about this. I don’t have time, I don’t have time. You could see that the thing wasn’t time that was causing a problem. It was them, meaning they were getting activated and stressed. And this goes back to what you were saying, Rob. People don’t spend enough time
Dr. Jonathan Fader: before they go in the room thinking like, where am I at? Am I in the right place? I used to have a technique where what I would tell people is, this is back when there’s paper charts we’re dating ourselves here, but I would say when you grab the paper chart on the door, that is a cue to yourself mentally to say, let me just take a slow breath, not a deep breath, because we actually know that slow breathing, that helps, but a slow breath, one breath, to get myself regulated so I can have the mindset to ask the question. Because if you’re in threat when you go in the room, you’re never going to ask the question because you’re worried about
Dr. Jonathan Fader: the next thing. You’re thinking like what you’re talking about, about money or time, rather than saying, you know, is it really going to matter if I spend 60 seconds? The research shows that, at least in primary care, I’m sure this equates to all areas of medicine, that the average doctor, right, interrupts the patient’s first chief complaint
in how much time? How much time do you think? 30 seconds. I would bet it’s almost like 10. It’s closer to Robert in the middle. It’s like 17 seconds.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: 17 seconds. So you say, what brings you in today, right? And the person’s talking,
Host: in 17 seconds, they’re cut off. That’s my point that I said earlier with the patient with the broken tooth, the doctor wants to get in there and start fixing it, cutting it off instead of listening to the whole story.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: And you could understand a doctor’s position because they have three rooms. They’re in the first of three rooms and those people are waiting. So they’re like, okay, I think I’ve got it. Let me make sure I got it. Instead of like finishing the point. But your point, Rob, that point is the point is like we don’t take the doctor’s position or your position into account. We’re stressed. And so the thing I talk to physicians and everybody about is, well, how long does the person take to stop talking? If you just allow them to talk, what does the science say about how, when will they stop? If you’re just listening there. Okay. I know you guys have horror stories, but like your average,
what do you think? Like what, how long? I have to be under a minute. I don’t, I don’t know. There’s some patients that can just keep going off and then I’ll get to a point. Do we need to stop them now? Right. Or do we keep them letting them talk? Yeah.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Yeah. You’re thinking about the few people who talked. Some are going to do that. And most doctors, most people, forget about, are not equipped with a skillset to navigate that situation. So it makes them nervous. So we teach how to do that, but the average patient’s going to stop talking in about 90 seconds.
In a minute and a half. Here’s a question.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: What if someone, and this is about all over life, like it’s not about being a patient or a doctor, like we’ve all been in situations where someone is like talking your ear off. What is the skill you use? If someone is talking and you need them to stop or because you have to move on, what do you do? How do you, how do you do it? How do you navigate that? Like you’re in the room, you got someone there and they’re talking. And by the way, this isn’t just about being a dentist or a psychologist. This is true. Like if you’re, you know, in a cab in an Uber or whatever, like you need a method. So what is the method to be able to help someone to move on from the, how do you, how do you do it?
That’s a good question. I think you have to, what do you do?
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Listen, so I got a toothbrush and this toothbrush is amazing. Oh no, look, you don’t understand. I took your advice last time, but I got 15 toothbrushes and I have them all over my house. I’m gluing them to the wall. I’m making your name, Marc M A C.
Jonathan, I couldn’t agree with you more. You know, I kind of want to find a common ground and agree with them to, to let me into jail. No, because that doesn’t, I have 15 and when I
Dr. Jonathan Fader: get 17, you and I are going to put our toothbrushes together and we’re going to create a toothbrush castle. You and I, we’re going to make it. So I love the way that you suggested that other toothbrush.
Jonathan, why is that important to you? So like, so the two techniques that he used, one were like to come alongside, I think he used to, I think to ask you a question to get you to switch.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Right. So the only thing I would add to what you said, so the two things he did is ask a question, which is great. And the other thing he did is agree with me. Those are great techniques. What I still don’t stop you though. What I suggest to people is that don’t be afraid to stop. Right. So what I usually say to people, you should say is I’m so sorry. I need to interrupt you for a second. I need to interrupt you for a second. And then I would go to those two techniques. So I would say, so you got to have two things. You got to have an interruption that’s and then a pivot. So what you have is a pivot. Most people don’t even don’t have a pivot.
So what happens is the patient’s getting their point across the doctor gets the point and the patient’s trying to circumvent and go for different examples of the same point. Totally. And also that’s another thing you said, usually if people, okay,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: there’s some situations where people just want to go on for whatever reason, but there are other situations in which I, if people are going on, it’s a sign to me that I’ve missed something, right? If people are talking sometimes or keep going back to it. And sometimes I’ll just say, I wonder if I missed something, right? Like, I wonder if there’s something unsaid here that I, that I, that I missed. The most powerful thing I’ve read about human communication is that for the most part, what we’re picking up is tone and body language. We obsess so much about what we say. But for the most part,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: if you’re saying, Hey, I’m so sorry, I got to interrupt you for a second, right? Because normally when people say, lean in a little bit, yeah, you know, maybe a touch, but usually they say, I have to stop, right? And your, your, your tone is indicating what’s happening rather than like, you know, what you’re saying, they might not even hear what you’re saying. They’re just reading your face and saying like, this guy’s annoyed. And then that says everything versus having, you know, a calm way about it, which is another thing you did. Like you were,
I had not, I had not. And you’re agreeing with them a little bit. Exactly.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: What do you think, even to get more academic on that, psychologically, what do you think a doctor, and it’s really good to talk about this because for a patient to be successful, they have to think about it from their doctor’s perspective for them to understand what to bring to their, to their own relationship. So what psychologically is going on with a lot of doctors? Do you think when they’re going through their day treating patients, whether they’re doing surgery, patient surgeries or they’re doing clinical rounds and they’re doing exams or a patient just goes to their local physician to get their physical, what do you think a lot of
Dr. Rob Raimondi: those doctors are bringing to that relationship that you wish patients knew about? And in terms of helping the patient to be, I don’t want to say empathetic to the doctor, but just to be, to meet the doctor where they are more.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Well, first of all, I love this question so much. And the reason I love it is because it’s a question of empathy and curiosity about another person’s experience. And most patients, and the three of us many times have been patients, like we’re our doctors, but we’ve been patients many times. I think what we forget is that this is a person who has a life and a set of cognitions and thoughts that we’re not privy to. And often we look at people in healthcare
Dr. Jonathan Fader: as just sort of being these omniscient beings that are floating around just fully clinically making decisions. But like, this is a person who missed their train or had a fight with their husband or partner or wife. This is a person that maybe didn’t sleep so well the night before. This is a person who is vulnerable to the same questions that we’re all vulnerable to. Am I doing okay? Am I accepted? Am I liked? Everybody’s operating on that level. We’re humans. Basically we’re like hairless monkeys walking around, right? And so we, you know,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: this is who we are fundamentally. And so my experience has been patients who think on that level, really, and think, let me treat this person as a person, are going to get more out of their doctor. And the evidence is there, right? Like if a patient and a doctor like each other more, there’s going to be better care. And it’s not even a conscious choice. It’s not like someone’s choosing, oh, I like this person. I’m going to treat them differently. We don’t even know we’re doing it, right? And it’s operating here. Like we have a friendship here. So we’re all going to give a different amount of energy to this podcast
Dr. Jonathan Fader: because of that relationship, right? Then we would if we didn’t have that underlying connection. And I think my main point about this is that patients are disempowered in their ability. They shut down and assume that the doctor has the entire locus of control, which is understandable, but actually untrue about the relationship.
Host: So trust comes into play a lot with this. And also this will apply to any aspect, any job in life, right? Order your coffee at Starbucks and the person behind the counter has an attitude, and you have an attitude. I see it applying to both aspects. So what you’re saying, it’s not just the patient becoming prepared, it’s the doctor being as prepared as the patient.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: No question. I mean, I had a supervisor in my PhD program who I really had a lot of respect for that simplified therapy and said therapy is the art of where my shit meets your shit. And I think that’s not thought about when you go into a room, right? That everybody’s coming in with a story. And even in a short primary care visit or in a dental visit, the way you behave as a person, as a patient, is going to affect the way your doctor or your dentist, your healthcare professional behaves. What about you? Like how does the vibe
Dr. Jonathan Fader: of a patient get more energy out of you or less? What do patients do that help you to be great? What makes you say, I’m going to go out of my way for this person? I know for a fact, I know you two, both. And I know that you’re extremely dedicated. And even what, Rob, you were saying, even to say, look, we put money out of it. This is about doing the right thing and providing excellent care. But that said, even on a pre-conscious level, what have you noticed about yourselves, about what patients do, the specific behaviors they do to kind of help you to be your best?
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Right. So we have an interesting job where we’re doing like microsurgery on patients who are awake, right? And so and they’re anesthetized, usually where we’re working, so they can’t exactly feel pain, but they can feel pressure. So they can feel some of what we’re doing because of the way that local anesthesia works. And so it’s such a weird kind of environment where I’m sitting a foot from somebody with another human or two humans that are also hovering over this human, where they’re laying down in a chair. It’s a little
Dr. Rob Raimondi: bit of a weird, weird job that we have. And so to do something in somebody’s mouth, technically precise at a high level, is controlled very much by the patient. Like, you know, I was just talking about a lab case with my technician before I came in here. And I didn’t get a chance to smooth some of my teeth the way that I wanted to. Now, that makes no outcome in the final. It’s just the way I like it to look. And I was showing it to my God, she just wouldn’t sit still. She just wouldn’t let me polish that one thing,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: you know? And so I think that I need a patient to be honest and open and vulnerable and connecting with me of who they are, what they care about. The patient who drives me a little nuts is the patient who says, you’re the doc, whatever you think. Whatever you think. Like, they’re so passive. Like, that worries me a little bit. I don’t feel comfortable with that because I need to know what you think. It’s not me treating you with my own stuff. It’s me
Dr. Rob Raimondi: treating you for your stuff. And so I need that patient to be an active participant in the relationship and also cooperative to work with me as a teammate. So I think one of the worst parts of a doctor-patient relationship is what I just said. It’s not a person-to-person relationship. It’s a doctor-to-patient relationship. And the word doctor has this connotation that skews the relationship to be heavily weighted on one individual where it’s a person-to-person and they have to work together. So I can do my best work and get the best outcomes
Dr. Rob Raimondi: in the best way when I have a really good teammate that works with me cooperatively. And that doesn’t mean that they’re just a passive person sitting open the whole time. That means that they would raise their hand and say, hey, I’m feeling that a little bit. What should we do about it? That’s okay, too. Just an active person who knows that I’m working my hardest and my best to give them and they should be also trying to give me the opportunity to take care of them. The way Marc said, I think it’s good if you like your doctors. And I think it’s even more important that you trust them and believe in them.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I’ve noticed the biggest breakdowns in that relationship is when there’s a little bit of an edge, a little bit of lack of trust, where the patient is questioning where the doctor’s coming from or coming into a relationship with. I think it makes it really, really stressful for all of us when we have somebody who is absolutely not self-aware on how hard they’re
taking it for us to take care of them. Yeah. I mean, I want to hear your answer to that,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Marc, but Rob, one of the things I want to say about that is as a patient, what I have noticed in myself is that, and maybe this is partly because I’m in the healthcare profession, I find myself being very respectful of doctors to the point sometimes. I’m not to the point where I’m like, oh, whatever you say. But I find that I’m concerned that someone that is taking
Dr. Jonathan Fader: care of me will feel like I’m trying to disagree with their opinion. And so I modify myself a little
bit and I’ll tell you something. Surprised to hear that. Yeah, yeah. I’ll be more hesitant.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: And I think that’s a pretty universal psychology of people.
When you say more hesitant to react, to speak up.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Well, I’ll speak up, but I’m way more diplomatic and passive than I am in other areas of life. Well, I’ll tell you a story about this that is hilarious. So unlike getting your dental degree, when you get your PhD in clinical psychology, the way it works is you do your PhD and then you have to do a year-long internship in a hospital. So I did mine at Columbia Presbyterian and you don’t get your PhD until you finish that year long. So the whole year that you’re in the hospital, you don’t call yourself a doctor, right? Because you haven’t
Dr. Jonathan Fader: got your PhD yet. You’ve got your PhD. It’s sitting, I literally put mine in my freezer. I was so paranoid something was going to happen to it. So I put my dissertation. I put, I had like a digital, I had a digital one and then I had another paper print out. So paranoid something was going to happen to that. I had a print out. I put one that I froze in a bag. It’s done. But so, but when I’m in my, I’m up at Columbia and I chose Columbia because I speak Spanish and there was a Spanish speaking clinic. So every time I would go into the clinic, right? Six months in the English speaking clinic, six months in patient and the
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Spanish speaking clinic, I would go into the clinic and I’d have to say to every person and in Spanish, listen, you know, just so you know, I, you know, I’m completing my PhD. So, you know, I’ll be a doctor at the end of the year. So just, you know, call me Jonathan. You don’t, you don’t have to call me Dr. Fader. I would say, Jonathan, no, Dr. Fader. And to a person,
you know what they said? Okay, doctor. Yes. Right. So there’s like a mentality that people have. Patients like to call us doctors. Well, yeah, but, but, but metaphorically, right? Like
Dr. Jonathan Fader: there’s a sense of like, this is an authority. I, I need to have this person have authority because it makes me feel a certain way. And so if you’re going to deviate from that, and I want less of
that in my relationship, same here, call me Marc, call me Dr. Marc. Here’s the thing though,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: but I think the thing is if you, so when you say, Hey, I want this person to be vulnerable with me. I want this person to advocate for themselves. I think that’s our responsibility to teach it to them and to guide them, you know, like what is the teaching doctor called in the hospital? Like the one who teaches the residents and attending the attending, right? So we have to like attend to our patients and say like, Hey, listen, you know, well, I’m curious how you guys do that because I think it’s a teaching process where you’re empowering patients and saying like,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: here’s how you do it. Most, most patients walk in and they’re like, this is a doctor. I’ve been trained. I see a white coat or I see DDS or, or MD or whatever PhD. And I’m like, I’m now, this person is now leading, you know, just like a pilot, right? Planes crash because the junior pilot is like deferring, right? And the same thing, right? It’s a sort of similar communication
dynamic. So how do you do that? First of all, I don’t wear a white coat in the room,
Host: right? We don’t wear white coats. We wear the same clothes as our team. We wear the same clothes as our assistants. We all wear scrubs. Over 30 years of treating patients,
Dr. Marc Sclafani: you get so comfortable at certain patients. It’s a little bit easier than one that you built a relationship with. But even knowing that I still have to check in with that patient when they sit down. You okay? How’s your day? Everybody can have a stressful day. You can be treating someone for 25 years and they may not want to be in your chair that day. You do like a vibe check, right? Yeah. How are you doing? How’s your day? Everything’s good. How was your summer and so forth? And describe the procedure, what’s going to take place today. Let them feel comfortable. Again, there’s a lot more trust with that longer relationship. They’ll let me kind of do it what I want. They may not question it as much, but it’s still important for me to describe the
Dr. Marc Sclafani: procedure, to connect with them before I start. It’s a little more difficult with a new patient. A new patient, we’re meeting for the first time. I don’t know their personality as well. We try to do a little background check to find if it’s coming from another family member, it’s a little bit easier, but a new patient coming in for the first time, I think it’s more important for us to slow down the process, try to find a common bond, a common connection before we start talking about dentistry and what needs to be done in their mouth.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I think what you’re saying is it’s about slowing down and connecting and that’s needed for optimum kind of relationships. I think the thing you said before, I knew this, but I guess I didn’t really think about it, is the conscious choice that you all made to all wear scrubs, which is a smart choice from my perspective. What about you two as patients? When you’re getting your own care, what do you notice that you do, don’t do? How do you manage that? I mean, the three of us have a wealth of knowledge of experience of taking care of people. What would you want patients to know what they should bring in the room? One thing,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: before I answer that question, I’ll answer it directly. One thing I’ve noticed is a patient comes in for a simple procedure in our world is to deliver a single crown. We shave the tooth for a crown. Previously, they’re coming in for a short appointment. It could be a 30-minute appointment, maybe on average. It’s 22 and a half minutes. Anyway, and I say to the patient, it’s a tooth that has not received the root canal, so the tooth has a nerve and alive in it. Say to the patient, would you like anesthesia today?
Dr. Rob Raimondi: And this is why I would like patients to realize this. Some set of my patients say, what do you think? And that’s the normal response. And some say, yeah, I like anesthesia, a normal response. Some say, let’s try without a normal response. But sometimes they’ll say, hey, I don’t understand that question. What do you mean? I go, well, some patients want anesthesia and they don’t. And I think patients don’t realize for the same thing that a doctor goes through all day long, there’s a huge variety. So the patient who says, no anesthesia,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: what do you mean? Of course I need anesthesia. The next patient says, why would you give me anesthesia? What do you mean? Happens every day. What I would like patients to know, what I do when I go into a doctor’s office is to realize that my own set of baggage wants needs and the way of going about things is unique to me. And that doctor has a variety of people they’re treating with the same condition that all want that done differently. So to not put a level of judgment on the doctor’s decision
Dr. Rob Raimondi: on how to do something if they don’t know what my own things are. So what do I do and I’m a patient. I’ll say the first thing that I do when I go to a new doctor is I am heavily, because I’m in healthcare and I’m not just a clinician, I just want to run a business, I’m analyzing the practice quite aggressively. I’ll be honest, I’m seeing how the phone call goes, I’m seeing how it’s answered, how the person’s on the phone. I ask a few questions to the person
Dr. Rob Raimondi: on the phone. One question I’ll always ask is, does the office run on time? Or when I get there for my two PM appointment, what can I expect from that situation? Should I be waiting or will you see me at two o’clock? Just so I can manage my day and how long will I be there? Of course, I looked at the doctor’s reviews, their website. I’ve tried to look at what they have put around their business in themselves and around this opportunity to take care of patients because I think as I just, you just met a patient of mine and I just saw we just
Dr. Rob Raimondi: did her full mouth over and she was like, I want to get you a gift, but I was saying, I want to do something. I’m like, listen, you’ve given me the single most amazing commodity in my life that some stranger gives another stranger your trust. And so I want to make sure that the patient and their office understands that moment. I don’t want a technical person always. Now there is a place for that depending on what your situation may be. You need brain surgery. You want a technician. You don’t want someone who’s emotional. It’s a very different thing, but we’re talking about our routine care, our routine doctors for our
Dr. Rob Raimondi: regular things. I want to make sure that the office represents what I want. Now the other side of the coin is there are some patients that just want, you know, a walk-in clinic and they just want to go there. They don’t mind sitting. They just want to get the thing done and move on and they’re not looking for this profound relationship and that’s okay also. So I guess the back off is I’m understanding what I want and I’m looking for offices that represent what I want and the people who are there have to also represent my needs and wants. So I understand what I want clearly from that relationship, whether it’s I just want to go in
Dr. Rob Raimondi: and get a quick thing done or I’m looking to form a profound relationship over time. I’m very clear about the outcomes that I’m looking for and I want to make sure that I do everything possible the way I will make sure I will get the forms before if they do that. I want to show a level of energy and respect to the office. It’s a two o’clock appointment. I’m getting there early. I’m getting there early. I’m greeting the people nicely. I’m treating them with everyone in the office get treated with respect by me. Like you said, you act a certain way. Well, I do too. I appreciate. I know that that person at the front desk is doing their best to feel the phone
Dr. Rob Raimondi: calls, check patients and check patients out. I understand the whole process. I’m trying to be
a very active participant in that relationship. So you’re being a good patient. That’s the type
Dr. Marc Sclafani: of patient that we want. You’re going into that office prepared. What that’s telling me is the dental appointment starts before the patient’s in the room, before the patient’s in the office. It’s the communication with the staff. When you go to make that appointment, the phone call with the staff, being seen on time, walking into the dental office and being recognized by the staff and being greeted before they enter the room. I think that’s important journey for the patient to help relax them because most people come into a dentist are stressed to begin with. So I think if they’re at ease and they’re comfortable before they even
Dr. Marc Sclafani: enter the room, and that sounds like what you’re trying to do for yourself when you walk into a doctor’s office. I know when I schedule a doctor’s appointment, I get very frustrated if a doctor’s not running on time. I usually purposely schedule the first visit in the morning to be the first. I know I’m going to be treated on time. I hate to say that because we always run on time and you can try my first patient, my last patient, I’m always going to try to be on time.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I always give myself a little bit more time. I do the same thing. And I do that for two reasons. When I schedule my own appointments, I schedule for the first appointment possible in the morning for two reasons. One, it’s likely to be on time, but also I know I’m going to get the person fresh mentally. Regardless of who they are, for the most people, I’m a little bit different because I think as the day goes on, I wake up more. But for me, I’m most mentally fresh though in the morning. And that’s proven for the most part. That’s how people are.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: So when I think about what a patient can do differently, I think it’s following the mechanics of the practice. So getting there on time, having your things filled out, only because what that does is it reduces the working memory of the people who are helping you. If you’re there on time and you’ve got everything done, then people don’t have to think about that so they can actually attend. There’s no way that, just like your kids, if your kids are not doing their homework, you can’t give them the same attention for other things because you’re busy
Dr. Jonathan Fader: trying to fix their homework. And so I think we all, if we can get that out of the way. But I also think going back to what Rob, you’re saying, to me, I think there are certain skills that patients can have that can help them. For example, I think the way, if someone comes to you with a recommendation, to ask yourself the question, do I understand what’s being asked of me, number one? And then if not, just to be able to say, hey, can you help me understand that choice? Those two steps I think are really helpful for patients to say, do I understand what I’m being
Dr. Jonathan Fader: asked, asking yourself that? Do you want anesthesia? You should ask yourself, do I know what’s being asked of me? And then to say to the person, hey, can you help me understand the choice? Just those things because when you’re doing it in that way, you’re showing respect for the doctor. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing is to help people and to help people understand their options and to find a path to get there. So I think those two things are really helpful. And then also the other thing is that what I think patients do that is really helpful,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: and this is just general communication, is to be more transparent. So look, my experience, you guys, maybe not, but almost every doctor I’ve ever trained, worked with, supervised, become defensive when they feel threatened or challenged. And so the important thing is like, and now in the age of large language models and ChatGPT, people are showing up at their physician’s office, at their dentist’s office and saying like, here’s an 80 page printout of everything I’ve learned about my diagnosis, right? And so if you bring that in, most doctors are
Dr. Jonathan Fader: going to be challenged by that, especially ones who feel not that confident. So it’s important, I think, that when you bring in information that you say, hey, listen, I found this, can you help me understand here? Like what here is relevant? What’s not to me?
Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And Jonathan, it’s better if sometimes we have that information in advance. I was gonna say that.
Host: You know, if we gather information on the phone before the patient comes into the office, and we know what their chief complaint is, and we know what their likes or dislikes are, we can dive into that before that we even see the patient, which is very helpful. You know, you look at like people give you 80 pages of medical history and so forth. Sometimes I don’t think they’re completely honest on those medical histories. Maybe a separate topic, but I think insurance can drive that. You know, have you ever seen a patient on your medical history that’s had more than two to three drinks a week?
Yes. Anybody ever say eight to 10 drinks? Everybody lies about alcohol intake, and I think it’s because insurance, and they’re afraid of their life insurance policy. Being judged, being judged. Being judged, yeah.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: What I end up doing at every new patient consult is after we talk about why they’re here, I ask a question, and I think that I think about this question for myself when I go to a doctor, is, okay, so we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do today, and so what are you hoping to, that the end of this appointment looks like, that we’ve achieved things? What have we achieved? What have we gained? What do we know? And where are we going from that? What needs to happen today for this moment to be a success?
Well, that’s brave. It’s a brave question. And my- You’re trying to learn about the person.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: No, I know, but I think, Rob, it’s a brave question because we fear uncertainty, and so I think most healthcare professionals don’t ask questions like that because they fear uncertainty, that the person’s gonna say something that they can’t handle, number one. And two, going back to our original conversation, that it’s gonna end up taking a long time, pushing you into a place where you’re late, et cetera. So I think that is exactly the question.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: People, I think most healthcare professionals don’t understand how, I know you two do, but how profound their effect on people’s lives are beyond just their, like you said, I mean, you were like, hey, just a brain surgeon. I mean, it’s big, right? What you guys do is big and it’s very technical. It’s similarly technical to doing any kind of surgery. Like you’re doing a procedure on someone’s body that has grave consequences. But I think people don’t really understand the tremendous healing impact of having a connection with someone who actually cares about what’s going on in your body and mind.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: And my call to action for all people, doctors, dentists, psychologists, is to say like, I’m gonna ask a question like that. Like I’m gonna find out because people are in here to get a root canal, people are in here to get the teeth cleaned, but they’re also in here because they’re concerned about their health and because they have things going on, right? And I think everybody needs the basic listening skills to be able to do that, to be able to ask a question and to be able to reflect back what you’re hearing to someone, to be able to know what to do when you can’t directly do something about what
Dr. Jonathan Fader: someone’s concerned is. Because you’re gonna ask that question and someone’s gonna say, you know, to be honest, I’m just having a lot of trouble in my marriage right now. They’re gonna say things like that, right? And so you need to have a way of being able to listen to that, to not feel that you have to resolve it for them, but to know that the resolution is in witnessing their experience and being able to show them that you’re, as you were saying, listening. But listening is an active process. It’s where you speak back to people when you’ve heard what they say. It’s not just a passive process where
they’re talking and you’re not saying anything. I would like patients to, in the mantra of being
Dr. Rob Raimondi: a teammate, to go to their appointments for their healthcare appointments with that in mind. And I would challenge them to articulate that to the team and their doctor in the least amount of words in the average place right now, right? The average physician, they have a list of things to do that’s longer than they keep up with notes, phone calls, patients, their burden. So the more you can focus on what your goal is and what you want, because again, you have a variety of people coming to the same problem that all want it handled differently in a different manner. And so
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I would ask all patients to go to their appointments knowing what they want. Oh, I just want to go for a physical, I just want to go for a checkup. Well, what do you want from the checkup? You can’t just go for a checkup. Oh, I’m going to just go on your hamster wheel of a ride like you do all day long. Just put me through your system. I think that that’s like, you shouldn’t do that. You should go there and you can communicate that like Marc said. But the thing that I would love to have is when a patient comes with a list of things, of questions, they open their phone and they have a list of questions that they got from
Dr. Rob Raimondi: AI or for themselves talking to their friends. Just send it beforehand.
You have everything in advance exactly what we said.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Email the office, give them a note, let them know, put it on the radar. Show that you are an engaged patient. Alone will help you get better health care.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: It goes back to what you just said and what we started from the beginning is being a better listener, listening to the patient, knowing when to speak. As a doctor, you’re trying to fix things. So a lot of times a doctor will jump in and try to say, have come up with a solution instead of listening. And you give a perfect example, somebody may have marital problems. All they want you to do is listen. They don’t want to solve that. And that obviously goes to any relationship, your wife, your kids, and so forth. I know what happens to me and my personal relationships. I try to fix things that my wife comes and she just wants me to
listen to her. We’ve been better about that, right? You’re trying to be. Do you want me to help solve this or you want me to listen? What do you need for me right now? Yeah. You’re not talking about it.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I mean, look, we act as though like the doctor-patient relationships are any different than our relationships, our marriages, but they’re very similar parallels. And the science behind this is what you were talking about, Marc. There’s something in the technique that I teach called motivational interviewing. There’s something called the righting reflex, right? R-I-G-H-T, righting reflex. And the righting reflex is it’s a natural human condition. It’s not a doctor
Dr. Jonathan Fader: thing. It’s a person thing that when I see something that I perceive is wrong, my mind just wants to fix it, right? We go into a parking lot and there’s like a sea of blue cars, but one red car. We don’t say, oh, there’s a lot of blue cars here. We say, oh, that’s a red one. And the reason that exists is it’s evolutionary. We have to notice what’s wrong in an environment to survive. If you’re a doctor, you’re built to notice a dangerous symptom. You’re noticing
Dr. Jonathan Fader: like a fever. You’re not noticing, oh, this person doesn’t have a fever. So really what most people don’t realize is how that righting reflex is impacting. It’s impacting us right now. As you guys are listening to me talk, most of your brain is thinking about what you’re going to say next about what I’m saying. Small part of your brain is thinking on a deep level, what is he saying right now? What does he mean? Like, what is he really saying? And actually, if you’re listening, people listening to this right now, they’re now waking up because I’m
Dr. Jonathan Fader: talking about them, right? But a lot of them are like doing the dishes or driving their car or looking out at the sunset, but now they’re listening. And we say in performance that attention is the currency of performance, right? It’s all about paying attention to the right thing at the right time every time. So listening means I’m going to put everything away and I’m really going to listen to this person. And I’m not listening to reply. I’m listening to understand. I’m asking myself the following questions. What does this person mean? What are they
Dr. Jonathan Fader: feeling right now as they’re talking to me? Really, I’m asking myself that those questions that got a deep level. Like what are they actually really saying to me right now? The suggestion I give for physicians in a primary care or surgical setting, whatever setting for dentists is the same. I think you should have 60 seconds of full stop with every single person. 60 seconds. What that means is nothing in your hands, no pens, no instrument in your hand, full eye contact. If that’s culturally acceptable or what the person psychologically can handle,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: but you’re really making eye contact with the person for those 60 seconds. And you’re just asking yourself those questions. What are they saying? What do they mean? What are they thinking? And then you respond. I think even just going back to the idea of like all or nothing, it’s hard to find a scenario where you can’t devote 60 seconds to someone in any medical setting, right? Even if you have 12 minute visits, like, all right, like 60 seconds, I’m going to give you the gift of my full attention and really, really giving you presence and saying, what is this person feeling in their core and thinking and needing? And have I
Dr. Jonathan Fader: gotten to that? That is a huge, I think, lift. And if I, a doctor shows me that they’re doing that, I’m going to go to them for the rest of my life. Like, you know, they would have to be a terrible technical, really terribly technical for me not to want to continue to see them.
So the motivational interview that you’re speaking about that goes both ways, doctor, patient, patient, doctor. Absolutely. Absolutely. Most people, though, Marc,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: haven’t trained themselves on saying that. Like your question about does it go both ways shows me that you were learning right now. You just drew this out of me. I mean, that’s what it means to deeply connect and people don’t train themselves on saying like, hey, what question we’re not even thinking like, what question should I ask now? You were already thinking about the answer. You already were already thinking about the answer or anything about the answer, right? There’s a great quote, I think it’s well
terrible. It said, you know, don’t judge a person by their answers. Judge a person by their questions.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: That’s one thing I noticed about Rob. And I thank you for that. Rob’s always asked better questions. If I challenge him with someone, he never gives me an answer. He gives me a
question back. Thanks. What does that do? What does that do?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: It makes me rethink the process. Was my, did I ask the right question? Was it an intelligent question? And we work together at the process.
Do you mind if I tell you why I do that? Sure.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I’m really trying to learn more about your position on the conversation. I’m really doing it to what you’re saying. I’m trying to understand what is making you feel that way about the thing I want to do that you’re telling me not to do.
Well, it’s just saying what he’s doing, it’s getting me to listen instead of asking a question. I want to fly to Florida. No, why don’t you want to fly to Florida? What you’re saying, Rob, though, is that it also, and I think you’re- Together, yeah. I’m on the wrong schedule. I should be flying to Florida. But you know what you’re saying is I think what you’re pointing out,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: when you ask someone a question, it shows respect for what they think.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: It also, now I know Rob long enough, it changes my question because I know what his response is going to be. I know not to feed him nonsense that he’s going to give me a tougher question back than I asked him. I’m going to fish through it.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: A little bit of a breakaway. When you go to a restaurant for the first time that you’ve never been to and they tell you the specials, do you ever ask the staff what’s their favorite
thing on the menu? All the time. All the time. And then you order it and it’s terrible and it’s not the best thing for you. Why are we assuming we like the staff’s taste?
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Right. I think that sometimes patients go to their doctors thinking they want to eat the same dinner. I think that sometimes one thing I want to point out, it was just sticking with me, I want to get it out there, is that your doctor may not have the same wants that you have. So if they’re suggesting a treatment or you do something, like you said, tying in the motivational interviewing, ask your doctor, well, what’s most important to you? Patients always ask me, what would I do? And so when they do that, I don’t just tell them,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I give them, I motivational interview myself for them because they may not be thinking that. I will say, well, if I were you or if I had this in my situation, I would do this. And let me tell you why. And I tell them why. I give them why I would order that dish or why I would order the salmon because I’m looking to be healthy, I want to be lighter, I’m out of hungry. The same thing is like, well, I would try to save that too because I don’t mind taking it out later on, but I would want to save it because saving a tooth with a ligament, a natural tooth, as opposed to having an extraction and implant, I think you can always have the implant.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Or if you save that tooth for five more years, you may get the best next implant. So I believe in preserving what’s the natural tooth surface and natural is in your body instead of taking out, but I have some patients and now then I will then give the patient the other side of the opinion that’s opposite of mine. So I will tell them what I would do. I’ll tell them why. And I would tell them what the other person would do who’s not me, to try to give them a full thing. I’m trying to give the patient that layer that I would think that unfortunately in some relationships with their healthcare physicians, they have to
Dr. Rob Raimondi: pull it out of them. What do you think about a patient asking an opinion of a doctor what they should do and how should they navigate that? How should they frame that?
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Well, I think that what you’re doing is you’re doing two steps. You’re saying what you would do, but you’re doing the pre-work to say to them why, right? You would do it. And I think that when patients are more empowered, they’re doing both those things. They’re asking a doctor to say like, well, what would you do? And then they’re asking why you would do it. I think one of the things though that is different here is
Dr. Jonathan Fader: knowing who your doctor is. So there are some doctors that aren’t going to be able to do that as much as you tried and making a choice to say like, is this really the doctor for me? And that’s okay. If you get a doctor that’s not able to make that shift and there are some that will not make that shift, don’t take it personally and decide like, is this the right person for me? You two are unique in that you’re highly evolved in understanding human communication.
That’s not, in my experience, the norm of most healthcare providers in our day and age. They don’t teach that in medical school. They do not. Well, they do in some disciplines. So in family medicine, they teach that obviously
Dr. Jonathan Fader: in psychiatry, they teach that. But in most disciplines of medicine and dentistry, there’s not a lot of good training education. And also what gets you into dental school and medical school? What gets you in? Academics. Academics. Academics. You just have to be an amazing student and really intellectually smart. When you’re going to dental school, no one sits you down and has a deep conversation with you about how you think about relationships. The only way that happens is in residency programs where that is the core skill like in psychiatry or something like that. So it doesn’t select for people that are going to do what you two do well.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: So I think what I tell people is, if this is important to you, and it should be because actually it’s going to indicate your care. Number one, you always want someone who’s clinically excellent, obviously, like you’re talking about. But secondarily, do they have the ability to be your healthcare partner for real? Not just say it on a wall, but listen in the way that Marc, you’re talking about and help to navigate choices and the way you’re talking about Rob. And if they don’t, if they don’t demonstrate that, maybe it’s not the right person for you.
How could someone work on those skills? What can someone do?
Dr. Jonathan Fader: So the only, in my view, the only way to really work on these skills is to get, and the science says this is true, some form of coaching and feedback. It’s very difficult to improve these skills. It’s kind of like saying like, how can you get better at being like a baseball player, right? Like you need a coach and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to actively get a coach like I coach people. It could just be that you’re actually asking, you pick up people who are on your team to give you feedback and say, how do you think I did there? Is there anything I could have done differently?
Dr. Jonathan Fader: And by the way, everyone could get better. There’s a great article in the New Yorker of Atul Gawande, the surgeon. I think it’s called My Personal Best, where he brings in a coach to coach him. This is one of the best surgeons in the world. He brings in one of his former attendings to watch him. I believe I can get better. Like, I’m going to watch this podcast back later and be like, huh, I could have done a little bit of a job explaining that, right? So I’d say that if you want to get better at the art of communication, and it is an art, in my view, it’s the most important art you could have as a healthcare professional.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Once you’re competent at your skill, it’s about finding ways to observe yourself back or have someone else give you direct feedback on how you did. And one of the best people you can do that to is your actual patient. Just saying to your patients. I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday. It was like a consult, kind of for someone, a friend of mine. And I gave a whole bunch of advice, and I said a whole bunch of things about what they should do about it. It was a very complicated, kind of like, intimate personal problem. And at the end of the
Dr. Jonathan Fader: thing, I said, how did I do? I mean, I’ve been doing this for 25 years, right? I just said, how did I do? And the person laughed, right? And I think it actually helped him feel more trust in me. And he said, no, no, I can tell you, you’ve been doing this a while, like you’re good at what you do. But I did it for the reason of saying like, I’m curious. What can I learn better? What can I do better? And so I think having, you know, to your question, getting getting actual coaches the best, but if but you can ask people for feedback everywhere you go. And most people, for most people, especially at the level that you two are at, it’s just going to improve your relationship because they know you have the
Dr. Jonathan Fader: qualifications. But it’s just going to give you more information about what you could do
to improve. That’s a big benefit without partnership. It’s almost like we can coach
Dr. Marc Sclafani: each other and speak to each other about anything. I’m going to get back to your example you gave about the restaurant when you go into a restaurant. And sometimes we ask the waiter for his recommendation on the meal. I think the restaurant you’re in matters. If you are in Le Bernardin, I’m going to go what he says, right? If I’m in a diner or something, I’m not sure I’m going to go with the waiter’s opinion. And I think that carries on to medical. If you were treating maybe in a, in a dental clinic where they see thousand patients a day, insurance clinics, I don’t think you’re going to get the same as you would in a private setting.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: Same with a concierge doctor compared to maybe an emergency room. So I think the expertise has a lot to do with it. And I think there’s a parallel between the two of them. And then you also mentioned about the communication and we don’t learn much of that in medical school, how to communicate. A couple of things come out to me. I can remember the only thing they did teach us is if you’re going to drill a tooth, you’re going to tell the patient you’re going to prepare a tooth. You’re going to anesthetize the tooth. You’re not going to inject the tooth. So sometimes it’s just out verbiage. And we learned a little of that in school, but not enough. And I think it’s the communication and the listen, like you said,
Dr. Marc Sclafani: that we always have to go back to and try to improve. And I think even the best of us
need to keep working on it. I totally agree. And I love that. That’s also just thinking
Dr. Jonathan Fader: carefully about what the person needs. I love the restaurant question. And I also think the same framework you applied to the what and why can be applied to the restaurant question. I think I was just thinking about if I ordered something and it came and it was terrible. But I think the next thing to the person is like, okay, well, what would you order? And then the next question is, why? Because then if you say why, then they’re going to say, well, well, I love salty stuff or whatever. And then you know, okay, this isn’t the right recommendation for me because this is
Dr. Jonathan Fader: a different person than me. And I think there’s a big learning in what you were talking about, too, about saying like, you know, we always attribute the same qualities to other people that we have because there are going to be patients that we’re going to see that couldn’t care how you communicated with them. Absolutely. They just want to get in and out. Check the box. And let’s get this done. Right. So to figure out like, who am I dealing with? It’s kind of like playing poker. Right. Like you can play the card or play the person. Right. You have to understand who you’re working with here. And I think that’s another thing that we
Dr. Jonathan Fader: don’t do. Both patients and clinicians, like we don’t think about that. Like I was saying before, I think patients can really ask themselves, like, a lot of people ask themselves, is this the right doctor for me? Like, you shouldn’t be asking yourself that. Is this the right person for me? Is this the right dentist for me? Like, do I, do I feel comfortable here? Right. Because, you know, an ideal state, you’re working with this dentist for decades. So it should be someone that you feel like connected to and that you could ask the question, can you help me understand that? If not, then, you know, it’s not the right person. I think you want to draw out
the patient to try to communicate even with the patient that doesn’t want to hear anything.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: Because when that patient has a problem, that’s when they’re going to want to start communicating with you. Why didn’t you tell me it could have went this way or that way and so forth.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I forget that you made me think of something just now when you said that. What I’ve seen doctors do really well, or people do really well, is be transparent about what’s happening. So going back to my example about saying, like, you know, when I would sometimes ask people early in my training, and even sometimes now, I would say, well, what do you think we should do? Right. People would be very mystified by that question because, and sometimes people would say to me, hey, you know, you’re the expert, you tell me. So I found that it was really helpful and I would need to say, hey, I want to ask you a question about your opinion. But the reason
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I’m asking you this is because your opinion is going to matter a lot when I give you a recommendation. So you’re kind of being really transparent about the process of asking their opinion. And I think that is a thing that we don’t do enough in health care is to say, like, this is what’s happening right now. So, for example, hey, I want to give you some options here. But the reason I’m giving you these options is because all of them have resting benefits. And we’ll talk about that together. But I really want to think it out with you. So you’re you’re telling them that you’re a team. And this goes to the thing about, like, you know, a lot of patients come in and they’re just like,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I mean, the white coat example, I appreciate the scrubs, but you guys still have a white coat. You definitely do. Right. Because you’re doctors. And even if you tell someone, hey, you know, call me Marc, call me Rob. People are looking and saying, like, this is an authority. I mean, the research, I’m sure you guys know about this, but the research on how just the perception that someone’s a doctor changes all the subjectivity. One of the most fascinating studies I’ve ever seen was they looked at pain control. They had people like post-op, I think it was.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: And they had three conditions. One is where the pain, like the pain relief was administered orally. The other one was the pain relief was administered by injection. And the other one was the pain relief was administered by injection, but with someone with a white coat. And then they looked at the people’s subjective report of pain post those three administrations in those three different conditions. And what happened?
They were better with the white coat. The white coat. Yeah. All day long. All day long, yeah.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Because of their perception. So there’s something really powerful about people’s perception. And I think we don’t often use that in a productive way. Because we either say, oh, I don’t have a white coat. Or we say, I have a white coat. You have to listen to everything I say. But there’s so many different interesting permutations of that, that if we were listening well to your point and saying, who’s this person? What do they need from me that you can really, I think, benefit them?
Dr. Rob Raimondi: One thing I was thinking about, as our professions have become very academically measured, and so our colleagues have performed academically very strongly, and therefore there may be some lacking in the social part inevitably. They can also look at, and you said there’s only so much they could learn, they could also hire someone or give one of their team members who’s the best listener the opportunity to stay with their patients before they do and distill it down for them. We have people who directly work with just our patients. Marc has a person, I have a human,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: that helps me directly just with my patients. And she gets to know my patients so well. So we together get to understand that human. Listen, she’s a little nervous, she wants to be out quickly, blah, blah, blah. Gypsy details that to me before I even walk into the room. So I know it helps the filter, it helps me to be the better person for that person.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: I also think that patients who are nervous with their providers don’t fully trust them, like you were saying before. You need to find someone who you trust. And if you’re not really feeling great somewhere, you should go somewhere else is my opinion.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: I totally agree with that. I think it’s a really powerful suggestion to have an assist in the sense of enabling other people to ask those questions. What are some of the things that that team conveys to you and how do they convey it?
And how does it change your response? They convey everything to me. Look, luckily,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Marc and I have Gypsy and Madeline who are direct humans and they manage our patients fully with us. And so they can tell me anything and everything they do from a variety of things, I mean, they’re constantly communicating to us together about people, personal situations, what they’re going through, what they want, what they need. They’re nervous about this or they’re frustrated about this. Maybe past dental experiences, why they left their last provider, why they were not happy with the last provider. All little pieces of the puzzle that help us.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: There’s less white coat there because luckily, these people, Madeline, Gypsy, especially, are just, you know, you’ve met them. They’re just great people. They’re wonderful. My wife and Gypsy have a relationship. When Gypsy calls me, Jeanine sees, she’ll pick the phone up and talk to Gyps about her day. And then they actually walks away with the phone and they bullshit for five or 10 minutes before I even talk to Gyps on Saturday when we’re talking about patients and things. And so the beauty of that layer is as much as I’ll say, hi, I’m Rob, I still have that white coat on, even though in my mind I’m their pure teammate. There’s no
Dr. Rob Raimondi: hierarchy or whatever there is. The beauty of that is that there’s this more of a human-to-human without the white coat syndrome or filter. And so we have a great relationship with Gypsy and Madeline ourselves. Like the four of us have a wonderful relationship personally, just humanistically. So it just feeds off of that. And so they also know what we need to be our best. And they’re learning what the patients need from us. They know what the patient needs, what we have to give to that patient from our own, like just from a timing
Dr. Rob Raimondi: of appointments and scheduling. And they might get to know patients. They might get to know that this patient, probably these three patients can’t go back to back because the one is very nervous and very needy. And then if you put three, you’re going to deplete me for the fourth. So they’re also managing our flow energetically. There’s a lot of work on that. We put a lot of work and time in managing the energy that we can sustain. Like you said, how you have maybe a curve of where you have your peak later in the afternoon and morning, whatever it is, like you can manage the person who is in a really tough situation. Maybe you put them
Dr. Rob Raimondi: there in your schedule. And in a way, what you’re doing too, is you’re getting a lot of feedback
Dr. Jonathan Fader: in that process. But the other thing that you’re talking about too, that we didn’t talk about so much, but it is like so important is trust, which you brought up. And you were also saying, Rob, about that’s the biggest gift, which I totally agree. And you just built a lot of trust on your team. And I think that’s one of the things that I think should be a goalpost in these relationships. And then it goes both ways. It’s like, what can you do as a doctor to
Dr. Jonathan Fader: build more trust? And also as a patient, what can you do to build more trust with your doctor?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: I think what we’re doing today is building more trust. We really care about patients and we’re trying to bring out the best of our patients. It’s the whole visit in Compass. Like we said, it starts before the visit, during the visit. I think the most important part is how we close the visit also. When a patient leaves, make sure there’s no more questions to ask that patient. Rob and I usually give most of our patients our cell phone numbers if there’s any communication. We’ll bring Madeline Gypsy, our treatment plan coordinators into the room to make sure there’s no other questions before we dismiss the patient. And get back, we started the appointment. Gypsy,
Dr. Marc Sclafani: Jerry Seinfeld says about a patient going to a doctor’s office and they go into the waiting room. They call it a waiting room for a reason. You’re waiting in there. And then what do they do? Then they take you and they escort you into a treatment room and then you wait in that room. Right? And I think that builds up a lot of tension in a patient waiting in the waiting room, then bringing in the treatment room and they’re constantly waiting for the doctor. I don’t think that should happen. My best patient is going from the reception desk, walking in and going right to the treatment room, not even having to sit in the waiting room, to run on time, to let the patient less anxious. And then when they’re brought into the treatment
Dr. Marc Sclafani: room, if the doctor’s not ready, there better be a staff member in that room with the patient to see if there’s any needs that they need water, they need coffee, the doctor will be here in a second. All that helps with the anxiety of the patient, for the patient to trust us more, be more relaxed, maybe even open up the communication skills.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: What the biggest mistake that I see healthcare providers make is not being late. It’s not acknowledging that they’re late. Right? That’s the biggest mistake because, you know, what happened, and this is, this is everything that we’d often don’t acknowledge what’s happening in relationships. We don’t say like, Hey, this is happening. And so I’ve seen, um, in many different clinics and in many different, uh, practices that, you know, healthcare providers aren’t willing to say, Hey, listen, you know, I mean, it’s also the research
Dr. Jonathan Fader: on mistakes, like mistakes happen. Right. Um, and I know you guys have never made any mistakes, but like with the regular dentist, like a writer, so much people do make mistakes. And you know, be able to say, Hey, look, this didn’t go perfect. And here’s why. And we’re going to work it out together rather than to try to sweep it under the rug. Right. People know that and it kills trust. And most people, when they’re running behind, all you need to do is say, I’m really sorry. We’re running behind. I’m going to do my best to, you know, speed this up. You know, um, that takes care of it, but most people don’t,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: don’t really do that. Um, and it just changes the whole, it changes the whole level of trust and vibe. And like, this goes back to what I was saying about attention. If I’m a patient and I’m, and I’m spending 17% of my brain space being resentful about the fact that I’m late or 25% of it worried about being late to my job, I can’t even really concentrate. Right. And so the other thing I want to call back to us, you said something about closing. I’m curious, what does it look like to end a visit? Well, and how do you think about that? What do you
Dr. Jonathan Fader: think about the art of kind of ending the conversation with people? I think it’s simple.
Like you just said, it’s being very honest and open and just, well, you, you just said
Dr. Rob Raimondi: previously is one of the most important things. Like you just commit to never lying to a single human being, like, you know, your patient, you never get to lie to your patient. If something didn’t go great, say, I’m sorry that this didn’t work out so well. Um, let’s figure out what happened and what we can do differently the next time to prevent it from happening for you, just even if you’re with a different person or if you’re with me. Um, I think at the end of the appointment, you can, you kind of have to review what was done practically for that human. And you, you learn, uh, sometimes like gaining clinical
Dr. Rob Raimondi: experience is through the process of all the things you did when you didn’t have clinical experience. Like it’s figuring out what, what did go wrong in other people. Like when I gave a patient a temporary crown, I have to say, well, those few patients who knocked it out or broke it, what did I not say to them? And what are all the things that people asked me? And I kind of put that all together in a little file in my brain. And so now you have a temporary crown. I’m not pulling that file and activated the checklist of things I have to tell you and communicate with that to you. And if it’s really important, I’m going to give it to you in multiple ways, right? Because I just tell it to you. You
Dr. Rob Raimondi: might remember 10 or 20% of it, but if I text it to you, you’ll have it there. And if I email it to you, have it there. If I give you written down instructions, you’ll have it there going above and beyond and understanding the humanality of that moment of reviewing and being honest and hey, listen, this is what happened. It’s going to be a little sore for, you know, I try to live under promise and over deliver. So if it may happen before you’re giving them notice, if you tell them after it happened, you’re giving them an excuse, that whole really preparing yourself, it goes back to preparation for us, I think, and over communication. We have so many redundancies in the office for things that we’re trying. And I think
Dr. Rob Raimondi: the people we don’t get it right is things weren’t slowed down enough for that person.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: I think closing the appointment is the opportunity for especially that patient as a non-communicator to really close it well and let them know exactly what the procedure is, what we did and what to expect the next procedure. So you lay that out right now. We prepared this tooth today. You can expect just like you said, there might be a little soreness and maybe even a follow up phone call that evening. I find a lot of times you call a patient, even if they have a little soreness, a little discomfort, they’ll be thanking you for the phone call. If they call the next morning, they might be angry about that discomfort, the same level of discomfort,
Dr. Marc Sclafani: but the fact that you addressed it and you said what could possibly go wrong, they’re very appreciative of that. I think what you’re saying there is
Dr. Jonathan Fader: consideration for people goes a long way, empathy goes a long way. And also just that, I think what we forget doing what we do, maybe a little bit less on me because I’m constantly dealing with it, but is that much of the time in a healthcare situation, people’s brains are in threat. Like they’re in threat mode. We don’t think about it, but like even if someone comes in for a routine checkup, they’re in their mind in a dental situation
Dr. Jonathan Fader: thinking, is something going to go wrong here? Am I going to experience physical pain today? Like that’s what their brain is thinking. We’re not thinking that, but they’re walking in and 95% of the people that are in the waiting room are not there thinking, I can’t wait to go on this ride. Like they’re in there thinking like, shoot, am I going to have pain today? Is this going to turn into something more complicated? Is my work going to be interrupted? So they’re in a threat
Dr. Jonathan Fader: state. And I think our ability to help them regulate by everything from the tone of our voice to even the things you said that you got from dental school about what language I’m using to describe what I’m doing. Like if I can help someone get out of that threat state, like we call it amygdala hijack, if we’re getting them out of our kind of our limbic system, which is this kind of ancient reptilian brain and into a place where they can even hear the
Dr. Jonathan Fader: question, do you want anesthesia? I bet you some of the people when you’re asking that are just like seeing threat, right? They’re not even like, you’re, you’re asking a question because we’re not in threat. Like you’re really comfortable. Like you know what you’re doing and you’re going to put on, you know, put a crown in or whatever. But they’re thinking like, am I safe? And so like getting on that level first, is that, is it such a valuable skill
set that people don’t, I think, think about our practice? I think the other thing that people
Dr. Rob Raimondi: should think about is how they set up at the end of the appointment. How do you, how did you schedule for that? Did you schedule for the end of the appointment? So in our schedule, Marc and I run, we’re in New York City. If I’m doing a procedure and the technical procedure takes me 60 to 70 minutes, I’m scheduling the appointment like such. The person got caught behind a bus or behind something. They’re 10 minutes late. Okay, my appointment now is, and I had 10 minutes on. They get here, they have to breathe because they’re stressed out and they might use the bathroom. It’s another five minutes and now we’re 15 minutes in the
Dr. Rob Raimondi: appointment. The room has to be set up from the patient before that. So we have five minutes before that. And then we have to do the actual, bring the patient and talk with them for five minutes. So now it’s another five minutes added onto that hour treatment time. And then at the other end of the appointment, you have to schedule for the close. And then my team needs another five, 10 minutes to handle everything in terms of the room, the material, whatever we’re doing. And then so for the next patient, so we have that ending there. So it’s, it starts, I think, for everyone scheduling the time that they need to treat that patient. And the other side,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: we get patients who care a lot about their health, but overscheduled their day. They ran here from work. They have to go to work afterwards. They want to get out, even though they want a little bit more from the appointment. They didn’t schedule their own day. So the other thing is a patient gives yourself that opportunity to get taken care of the best the office can. One thing we have to spend an incredible amount of time with is our hygiene team. So we block our hygiene an hour, 15 blocks. And so they’re just set for the whole day. The patient comes 30 minutes late. The hygienist has two opportunities. I mean,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: two decisions to make. One is, do I treat that person fully and run late for the next patient? Or do I end early and not do the best cleaning? And it’s a very, we haven’t stopped talking about
Dr. Marc Sclafani: that hour and 15 minutes is pretty unique. Before COVID, most offices gave 45 minutes to an hour for a cleaning. X-rays, exam, patient running late, dismissing the patient, home care instructions, all done, doctor exam within an hour. This hour and 15 minutes, it gives us a little wiggle room for patients late. Also lets us slow down the process for that apprehensive patient. And it’s not just about the cleaning. It’s about the communication with the patient and explaining why we’re doing the deep cleaning or why we’re applying fluoride. So that extra time,
Dr. Marc Sclafani: I think, relaxes the patient, makes us a better doctor. The patient gets a better result at the end of the day. I still think that late patient is, I don’t know from a psychological standpoint,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: what you think. I believe that some of those late patients want a shorter cleaning. They really don’t want to be here or they want to be here that long. They want to go, they want to get a good cleaning, but they just can’t emotionally sustain being there for that long because they’re so nervous. So part of talking with our hygiene team is if they come in late, end the time that you should have ended at, and maybe that person is just without speaking about it, the mistake that I think healthcare providers can make is overreading the person and not realizing that they may not tell you everything. They are showing you a version of themselves that they want you to see.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: And too many, I think, providers and those on our team make assumptions around what they show them. They may misread the relationship as being too friendly and the person’s just being friendly because they’re nervous and that’s how they act when they’re nervous, but they’re really not wanting it to be as friendly as it is. So just being careful. I know we had a hygienist years ago who made a really bad off-color joke to a patient because they thought the relationship was a big deal happening in our practice. This is before you. We’ll talk about that later. Yeah. And it was 15 years ago when they were working independently or whatever.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: And it was like the person misread the relationship, the hygienist, and it actually meant the end of their job. But I think the question is, what questions can you ask to observe where someone is
Dr. Jonathan Fader: and how do you get them to feel more comfortable? The simplest thing really is just to say to notice. I think what you’re saying is rather than what they’re saying, to notice how they’re behaving and to be able to ask people that you’re concerned about, like, how are you feeling about the procedures today? And how are you feeling about it? And so that can help to get people there. I’m curious about what questions do you ask people at the end of your meeting?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: First, I’ll say, do you have any questions for me? And take a pause, whether it’s 60 seconds, like you said, and see if they have any communication. And maybe they’ll say, can I eat on this right away? When will the anesthesia wear off? I ask them if they have any questions, and then I’ll provide anything that I think that they may have questions about.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: Yeah. I think you want to make sure they can mirror what you’re saying and have them say it themselves, the important things, and give it to them in another form, and then follow up with your team or yourself, follow up. How do you as a healthcare provider enter that relationship and an appointment and the end? Do you have a checklist in your head, or are you kind of floating through the appointment? What would you want patients to know? So as we wrap this up, what would you want patients to know when they enter a relationship with you? And just selfishly, what are you thinking? Because you’re obviously exceptional
Dr. Rob Raimondi: at what you do, and a high performer has had an incredible amount of success. So what do the successful healthcare practitioner like yourself think about entering the relationship,
and what do you wish patients would know? I think that the most important thing
Dr. Jonathan Fader: is the word you said, relationship. That the science shows us that the closer we connect with people, the better the outcome is going to be in any kind of relationship. And that patients can affect how their doctors treat them by being open and curious, by asking questions that are diplomatic, but evoke from their doctor what their doctor knows. Most doctors
Dr. Jonathan Fader: want to express their knowledge. If the question comes in a really respectful way, most of us are really happy to engage on those questions. I also think, depending on the clinician and what’s going on, demonstrating interest in the person too. So for example, even patients that say, how are you doing? How’s your day? Even if you are not going to get into depth about your day, it just shows that the person’s interested in you. And I think a lot of people just
Dr. Jonathan Fader: don’t do that. I think from a doctor point of view, it’s interesting to hear you say, I think most doctors don’t say, do you have any questions? First of all, they don’t. Most people want to get in and out. They want to do their thing and leave and they don’t want complications because complications create uncertainty. And we don’t like uncertainty because it opens us up to judgment. If we’re certain, then we’re not going to be judged. If you don’t ask a thing, do you have questions? Then there’s nothing weird that could happen that would open you
Dr. Jonathan Fader: up to uncertainty or judgments. Because someone might ask a question we don’t want to know the answer to. So you’re already off to, I think, a departure from what most people do that’s not actually effective. I think it’s really helpful to ask patients all kinds of questions at the end. One of the questions I ask all people in all of the different situations is, what’s left unsaid? That gives people a lot of opportunity to say things. Now, you have to be ready because some people will say, well, what’s left unsaid is I’m getting a divorce and blah, blah, blah. So we’re going back to the first thing.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: But what’s left unsaid? What’s left unsaid for you today is a question I like to ask a lot of people about that, just because it evokes all kinds of things that you didn’t get to. Sometimes, actually, what I think is helpful to ask with a smile, and this goes back to the thing, it’s like, how do we do today? And when you say, how do we do today, you’re saying a lot of things by saying that.
I use those exact words.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: You’re saying, basically, hey, I’m ready for feedback, but you’re implying something about the relationship when you make a comment like that. How do we do today? And then I think for some people that you really value, say, hey, listen, I value your experience here, and I like to get feedback from people. Tell me a little bit about what was your experience like today? What went well? What didn’t go well in your entire experience? I know that you guys are into unreasonable hospitality as a concept, and I think one of the best things about that is just
Dr. Jonathan Fader: like a deep thinking about, and you two clearly do this because you’re thinking about the waiting room, you’re thinking about, I know how much effort you both put into every office, what it looks like, what it feels like, what you wear. And I think for doctors to be able to think about from the moment that they have that first call, like the dental visit, the doctor’s visit, starts from the moment that that person types in their name into a web form or makes a call, and it never ends, but certainly it ends with when they get home, like what kind of follow-up
Dr. Jonathan Fader: there was. But just to get back to your question, I think that patients really would benefit by asking themselves questions, right? Number one, first question, why did I select this person, and how do I know that this is the right person for me beyond their credentials, right? The next question is, what am I bringing to this relationship? Like what are the things, what am I bringing, how am I showing up? And asking yourself the question,
Dr. Jonathan Fader: what could I do better, right? And if you don’t know, ask your doctor, like say to your doctor, like, hey, how, what could I do better to get the most out of my care? If someone asks me that, what can I do better to get the most out of my care? That’s like Christmas and Hanukkah all around.
That’s a win-win.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: If someone asks you that, like, what could I do better to get the most out of my care?
I mean, the best care from you. You’re going to go to the mat for that person. Yeah, you are.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Not only are you going to tell them, but you’re going to be so psyched to help that person.
What do you think, Marc? What’s one thing a patient can do to help themselves get better care from you?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: Communicating, really being honest about their problems, honest about their fears in dentistry, what bothers them, maybe what turned them off from their previous relationship. But 50% of it is my part, being a better listener, being a better communicator. I mean, the patient can be armed and give me everything I need. I have to be on my game. I have to be on my focus, going back to what we said, whether it’s your workout or your run in the morning or eating properly or sleeping properly. Us being focused, I think it’s a win-win situation back and forth if we follow that format.
Dr. Marc Sclafani: The patient that comes to me and is telling me about their personal life and they went to the tennis match, I know that’s a win-win already. I know they’re not focused on the fear of the dentistry. They’re relaxed in my chair and they’re able to communicate about things like that. So when the patient comes in, less stress, it makes it easy for everybody.
When that comes through all the relationship and trust, yeah. It’s a big circle.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: The other thing I would add is being organized as a patient around your healthcare. Having what the office needs from you so that you can get the best care from them, giving them it easily and asking that on your phone calls before the appointment. Saying, what should I bring? What should I give you beforehand? What do you need from me so that you in the office can give me the best care from you is the greatest single question you could ask when you’re finished making that appointment. Coming in this time, what do you need me to give you before or during that appointment so I can get the best care from your office? That also has a psychological benefit from the people
Dr. Rob Raimondi: who are fielding that question because they know you’re serious in a nice way. You want to be prepared for them. They will give you better care if they know that you’re just a kind, focused person. One last thing I think we should talk about. I think it’s important. I want Marc to go first if you don’t mind. What does it mean for you to be someone’s doctor? The thing that you wouldn’t say to anyone that you have internally, but I don’t even know this question. What does it mean to you to have thousands of patients and you have a team trusting you? You have me to trust you as my partner. What does it mean to you?
Dr. Marc Sclafani: It’s a good, warm feeling. It’s not an ego feeling by any means. It’s nice when people trust you. I look at it as my family trusts me. It’s such a good feeling when your patients trust you. You see that when they refer their family members. I’ll have old people referring their kids and kids referring their parents. Maybe not even my dentistry. I know my communication is successful.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I know I’m connecting with that patient. Fader gave me a great tool that when I’m getting really stressed out to ask myself and I guess I’ll ask it to you in this situation. How do you want to be
remembered by your patients and your team? I want to be remembered that I have empathy
Dr. Marc Sclafani: and care for my patients and it’s the number one priority is them when they’re in the chair. I’m not selfish about it. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I love the trust that I built with these patients and that means everything for me for patients to let me work on their mouth for four hours at a time. We took a patient that comes in for a cleaning and they want to be out in 20 minutes. There’s patients that are in our chair for four, five, six hours letting us work on them. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. It’s a great gift. I feel very lucky and
Dr. Marc Sclafani: fortunate that I get to take care of thousands of mouths and I don’t take it for granted.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: People tell you everything about themselves that they tell nobody. They say things out loud for their first time probably with you. What does that make you feel? How does that make you feel
and how would you want to be remembered? I think more than anything I want to be remembered as
Dr. Jonathan Fader: someone who deeply listened to people and who helped people. We’re just here for a very short period of time and I think we forget that. I think there’s extreme moments of beauty and they usually come through deep connection. I’d love to be remembered as someone who was able to connect with people at the deepest level that they’ve experienced. Also, I do believe that we’re all
Dr. Jonathan Fader: walking around with different feelings, thoughts, and dreams and burdens that there are no place to have those witnessed. My aim is to create spaces where people can be witnessed in those ways where they don’t have another opportunity to do that.
Rob, what do you want to be remembered by?
Dr. Rob Raimondi: That I’ve put every ounce of my human abilities, capabilities, effort, knowledge to take the best care of everyone around me for every single moment that I was doing it. That I took care of their trust and their health and to the best that we have from the team to my partners, both of you, helped me through my life. We took care of that trust and tried to be the purest form of it. I feel like I’m the best version of myself when I’m taking care of my patients.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: I try to be the father that I am as a doctor. People get the best of me. I’m trying that every day. It’s everything to us and I hope to be remembered as someone that always put everyone around me, not first, but I put their priorities in order. We set the bar for other people to try to get past. I say to our associates that you have to be better than me.
Dr. Rob Raimondi: The only way this works. I hope that we set that bar as high as I have the ability to set it so that I can make the world a better place while we’re here taking care of each other and that they then can raise it even more than I did. That’s what I try to do every day.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: Yeah, that’s a beautiful side to me. I think actually it’s at the core of why people come here is the way you talk about those things. At the end of the day, people can choose anyone to do the mechanical things. When you’re choosing someone who has the level of commitment
that you two have, that is really true healing. You know what we see that a lot is sometimes my
Dr. Marc Sclafani: schedule, Rob’s schedule is busy and there’s an emergency that calls on the phone and needs to be seen today. We’ll have to refer to our associate in the office because our schedule is booked and the trust they have in us to let someone else work on them because the level of trust that we establish to them, different maybe than a new patient that’s expecting to see us, but someone that we’ve trusted through the years, we’ll trust our recommendation
to another referral. That means a lot. They can find you at jonathanfader.com.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: They can find me at jonathanfader.com and they can find my book Life as Sport and they can find us at Strata Performance where we do performance
coaching for leaders, physicians, athletes at strataperformance.com. If you’re a physician,
Dr. Rob Raimondi: healthcare provider and you’re looking for some help, look up Dr. Fader and engage with him and his team. He can tell you that it’s something that’s remarkable. It’s supportive. It’s helpful. It’s wonderful. It’s like a personal trainer for your emotional mental abilities and I think everyone who’s taking care of other humans should have it. It’s important. Marc and I have had coaches for years and it’s beyond an essential part of us being high performers of what we do to have a support to help guide us, put us back together. I mean, look, I’ve called you with extremely stressful situations and I’ve called you with celebratory
Dr. Rob Raimondi: situations and I couldn’t be where I am and we couldn’t be where we are without people like you
doing this work. I appreciate that. This for me is an extremely celebratory situation. This was nice. This was fun.
Dr. Jonathan Fader: It was really cool that you don’t get a chance to stop and think about what are the core ingredients and the work we do. I really appreciate you guys having me.
Any questions from Rob and I, you can find us at One Manhattan Dental,
Host: Dr. Sclafani or Dr. Raimondi at One Manhattan Dental. And I hope we’ve inspired you to get better care. Thanks for listening.
Yeah. Thank you.
