Real-Life Decision Making
"We have to make decisions and tough calls every day," says dental technologist
Blaine Pardy. Instructions left by dentists may be hard to follow. Sometimes
they don't contain enough information, and on occasion they may appear
to be completely wrong!
Each time, dental technologists must decide whether to go ahead and work
according to their own standards, or try to reach often busy and hard-to-track-down
dentists to clarify instructions.
You've just finished working on a bridge. You read over the prescription
for the next apparatus on your list. It calls for a clasp to be made for one
false tooth. You pick up the impression and hold it under the lamp light.
You look back at the request form and then at the impression. There just
isn't room in this mouth full of teeth to create a clasp for the tooth
the way the dentist has ordered it.
You spend another couple of minutes examining the impression, trying to
find a way to insert the clasp the way the dentist has ordered. The only way
to ensure a proper fit for this false tooth is to use extra soldering -- which
would add $50 to the bill.
The patient will be angry if the price the dentist quoted differs from
the price it costs to make the piece. That, in turn, could make the dentist
angry.
This dentist is difficult to contact. Should you make some calls and try
to locate him? Or, should you simply go ahead and make the tooth
with the extra soldering and tell the dentist about the extra charges later?
What do you do?