Everybody needs a good family dentist who they can trust to look after their dental health and whom they feel comfortable visiting regularly. A good ongoing preventative dental care regime is essential to protect and preserve dental health. It helps to ensure lower dental costs in the longer term and greatly reduces the risk of requiring emergency dental care. However, if you haven’t visited a dentist for a while or have recently moved, you might wonder how I choose a good dentist or how do I find a good dentist in Australia? We’ve put together some easy tips for you to follow and questions to consider to help you choose a good dentist.

What Should I Look for When Choosing a Dentist?

Your oral health is unique, so it’s important to think about what kind of dentist will suit you best. For example, if you are interested in cosmetic dentistry, look for a practice that offers a wide choice of cosmetic dental services. If you have a young family, you will want to look for the best dentists for kids, selecting a more family-oriented dental practice that you can visit together. Ideally, it’s preferable to find a dentist that can handle all age groups than to visit separate dental clinics.

Do They Offer a Complete Range of Dental Treatments?

Some dental practices focus only on general dentistry, providing a range of preventative and restorative treatments to protect and preserve your dental health. They might be less able to provide other desirable treatments required less frequently, such as braces.

Tandara Dental Centre is a full-service dental practice. It can provide a broad choice of dental treatments to suit every age, including a wide selection of cosmetic dentistry procedures and dental implants. When you visit our practice, we can ensure all your dental needs are catered for under one roof. It can be immensely reassuring to be treated by a dentist you already know and trust rather than having to find a different practice for a specific service.

What about Holistic Dentistry?

Holistic dentistry considers how oral health affects your overall health and vice versa. It is an approach that seeks to protect and conserve your natural teeth using biocompatible materials. If holistic dentistry is important to you, you will find many dentists following this path. Certainly, when anybody visits our practice, we carefully consider their oral health and general health before recommending the most suitable treatment approach. Many modern dentistry materials are highly biocompatible, such as composite resin fillings that mend cavities nearly invisibly and metal-free, all-ceramic restorations.

Ask Family and Friends for Their Recommendations

Asking close friends and family for their recommendations is also a good place to start. Listen carefully to what they have to say about their favourite dentist, why they like the practice and their view of what makes a great dentist. Word-of-mouth dentist recommendations are usually very reliable but bear in mind that your friend or relative may have different dental needs.

What about Online Reviews?

The Internet is packed full of information. Looking for online reviews can be useful, but remember that unhappy patients are far more likely to leave reviews than satisfied patients. If the reviews are generally good, the practice is probably okay. Still, sometimes it’s possible to pick up on a recurring theme such as a lack of sensitivity or lack of time that may indicate an issue.

Consider the Location and Opening Times

We know it’s all too easy to put off dental visits, especially if the practice is inconvenient to visit. Ideally, you want to choose a dentist close to work, school, or home, which offers convenient appointment times. For example, our centrally located practice is open six days a week, so it is easy to arrange a dental appointment to fit in with your busy schedule.

Read the Dentist Bios

A good dental website will have the dentist bios, which are well worth reading. You can check your dentist’s credentials and experience and get a good idea about their personality and values. It’s also important to make sure your dentist regularly attends continuing education courses. Dentistry is a fast-evolving technology. We ensure our entire dental team is committed to ongoing education and providing our patients with the best and most advanced dental care.

What About Up to Date Technologies?

That brings us to our next point: ensuring your chosen dental practice uses the most up-to-date technologies and materials. These really can make a difference to your quality of care, comfort during treatment, and the longevity of dental restorations Tandara Dental ensures our dentists are trained in the latest techniques and have the most up-to-date technologies to implement this knowledge. We only use top quality materials providing excellent aesthetics and that are hard-wearing and durable.

Do They Treat Nervous Patients?

Many people fail to regularly visit a dentist, meaning they can have untreated dental disease and can be in significant pain and discomfort. Avoiding a dentist is often due to dental fears and phobias that can be difficult to overcome. People in this situation might only seek dental treatment when in so much pain they cannot stand it any longer. If you have dental fears or phobias and are wondering how do I choose a good dentist that will make me feel comfortable and relaxed, then the answer could lie in sedation dentistry.

Sedation dentistry uses dental sedatives to help people relax while receiving dental treatment, alleviating their fears and phobias. Tandara Dental Centre offers sedation dentistry to help nervous patients feel more comfortable and people with a strong gag reflex or who require lengthy dental care to restore dental health. Options include happy gas or Nitrous oxide and intravenous sedation, where people feel so deeply relaxed that they may even fall asleep during treatment. At the same time, we treat patients very gently as if they were our family, and when someone feels nervous or anxious, we take the time to discover why to understand how best to help them overcome these feelings.

What Makes a Great Dentist?

Even with all these tips, you might wonder how do you know if a dentist is good? The role of the dentist is to use all their skill and training combined with a great chairside manner. The best dentists are excellent listeners who enjoy getting to know their patients and building professional relationships that can last for years. Many dentists in Australia have excellent qualifications, but ultimately it is a personal choice. Reading all the reviews and listening to friends’ word-of-mouth dentistry recommendations means nothing unless you feel comfortable in their dental practice. The good news is that modern dental practices, and Tandara Dental is definitely amongst them, are often specifically designed to create a warm, welcoming environment with a friendly dental team ready to take care of you.