The Importance of Dental Patient Education
One of the most important – yet time consuming – aspects of being a dentist is how to effectively keep patients informed and educated. From informing patients about the breadth of services that your practice offers to ensuring they’re in-the-know with the latest oral hygiene tips, pre- and post- procedure instructions, and details of any procedures themselves – there’s a lot that goes into keeping patients educated and well-informed. Plus, thanks to the Internet, there is a lot of misinformation that exists, so to ensure your patients have the best information available, it’s important to supply and direct them to your resource.
Here are the top best practices to dental patient education to ensure your practice is providing valuable content that visitors will love:
- Make sure the content is easy-to-understand. While you don’t want to be too vague, you do want to break the content down, making it as simple as possible, so patients can understand it as clearly as possible. Where you can, try to write in “non-dental” language and avoid getting overly technical.
- Use high-quality visuals. To support your message, use patient-friendly visuals such as photos or videos alongside the content. Make sure the graphics used aren’t so detailed where you risk scaring a patient away, but keep them engaging and relevant. When using video, try to keep it as short as possible while providing graphics that support the voiceover to better explain the story.
To appeal to all types of learners, add video throughout the pages of your website where it makes sense to further support the message you’re trying to communicate. For example, if you have a page about root canals, but someone is more of a visual learner, they may be prone to watch your video instead of reading all of the content about root canals on the page. On the other hand, patients who want to learn more details about the procedure may spend more time reading through the content on your particular webpage. By providing various types of content you can ensure patients digest information in their preferred way.
- Make patient education easily accessible – so patients can find it via multiple channels. When you put time into creating thoughtful and educational content, you want to ensure patients see and take advantage of it! If you’re writing blog articles, make sure to share those new posts and articles on your website and social media pages. If you’ve created a new video, add the video to applicable pages on your website, share on social media, and play it in your office. When patients are in your office, encourage them to go home and visit your website to learn more about a specific procedure. The more you can showcase your content, the more useful it will be!
- Communicate the full story. In all of your content, make sure that it tells a story. Include the benefits of the service, answer common questions patients have around the service, explain the risks of treatment and consequences of not getting the treatment. Most importantly, include a call-to-action of what patients should do next – such as contact your practice to schedule an appointment.
Creating valuable patient education can be time consuming, yet it’s an essential part of every successful dental practice. That’s why ProSites does the heavy-lifting for you and provides hundreds of pages of pre-written, patient-focused content that you can fully customize to your needs. Plus, you access a library of dental education videos to thoroughly explain the various procedures your practice offers in a way that’s engaging and easy-to-understand.
To explore these features and more, start a free 14-day dental website trial or call (888) 932-3644.