editorial
The Patient is not always Right Exploitive dental marketing misleads patients into thinking they are.
T
he customer is always right—right about what they want or need and whether a business enterprise has met their demands. In the marketplace, proprietors embrace this mantra in order to confidently give customers what they want, with few or no questions asked. As sellers, they can safely assume that buyers of a commodity, in an isolated transaction, understand what they want and why they want it and are, therefore, right about their decision to have it. The law sets the bar pretty low in business deals. As long as a seller does not make fraudulent representations, he or she has no responsibility to secure the buyer’s understanding of risks and benefits before making the sale. The seller merely acts as the buyer’s agent, not a trusted advisor or even a primary source of information. Commercial marketing reflects this buyer beware concept. If buyers are wrong about what they want, it’s their fault. The patient, conversely, is not always right. Unlike a buyer and seller, the dentist and patient do not enter into their relationship as equal bargainers. Vulnerable patients in need of care lack the knowledge and skill to diagnose their problem and solve it. This forces them to trust dentists, who are armed with the appropriate expertise, to act in the patient’s best interest. As a result of this imbalance, dentists do not have the luxury—or the right—to assume that patients understand what they want or need and why they want it. Rather, dentists must carefully determine whether the patient may be
2 NOVEMBER 2020 The New York State Dental Journal ●
wrong about his or her decision to demand a specific treatment. The law and ethical code set the bar much higher for professionals in ongoing relationships than for merchants. They require that dentists secure patients’ understanding and consent before proceeding with treatment. However, the patients’ autonomous right to self-determination is limited legally to when their choices involve treatment within the standard of care and is ethically in their best interests. Dentists must act as a trusted advisor and the primary source of information. If a patient’s request is not in his or her own best interest, the dentist must tell the patient they are wrong about what they may want. Unlike buyers, patients, ideally, need not beware that dentists will take advantage of their predicament. Professional marketing sometimes unprofessionally depicts dental services as a commodity sold in a commercial transaction. It misleads prospective patients into thinking like customers and fails to convey the reality that the patient is not always right and the dentist will not blindly act as the patient’s agent in giving them what they want. If patients are wrong about what they want, it’s the dentist’s fault. Exploitive dental marketing tactics, such as those that prey upon America’s obsession with personal appearance and immediate gratification, reduce the professional relationship to a market transaction in an effort to entice the public into the marketer’s establishment. A dental ad urging the public, for example, to “get your quick, easy and
