The answer is, “Yes!” Of course you can offer pain and dental sleep medicine services in your practice. With the first step of deciding to offer these services out of the way, the most important steps are completing continuing education to ensure you can provide your patients with proper care, as well as how you can implement it into your dental practice. Let’s take a look:
Complete Continuing Education
After you have decided to offer dental sleep medicine in your practice, it is important to start your education. By completing continuing education in the area of dental sleep medicine you can establish a practice that offers the best care possible. Just as you completed dental school, you will need to the same with dental sleep medicine. Go to lectures and seminars. Complete a shadowing of an experienced dental sleep medicine dentist. No matter what, you are getting the experience and knowledge you need to provide superior care for your patients.
Market Yourself
We’ve said it before, but it cannot be said enough—market yourself and your practice. Understanding your competitive marketplace is critical when developing a new offering or expanding a service line. Do your diligence by asking the following questions:
- How large is the market?
- How accessible are these patients?
- How will sleep competitors respond to this new service?
- Are there opportunities to collaborate?
These are all important questions that work to help improve your dental sleep medicine practice. Once you create an effective marketing campaign you can reach current and future patients.
Communicate
One of the biggest mistakes in launching a new dental program is understanding the importance of language. By integrating dental sleep medicine into your practice, it requires new behaviors and ways of adapting—especially through the words you use. Pay close attention to how you describe your service. Using the wrong words can deter patients away from your office and those new services, so make sure you word your content appropriately. Everyone in your office should have a solid understanding of what dental sleep medicine is, who can benefit, how it works, and why it is so important. And, with that comes being fluent in dental sleep medicine so that everyone can describe it to patients without hesitation.
The future of dental sleep medicine is a bright one. With numerous opportunities to provide value through improved patient care, your options are endless, so take charge as soon as possible. Remember, anything is possible and if you put your mind and energy into this, your practice has the opportunity to be extremely successful.
Contact Dr. Mayoor Patel for more information on Dental Sleep Medicine and the next steps you should take to offer these services to your current and future patients.
