by Terri Slough, RDH & Eliezer Ganon, Digital Architect
Technical skills are the talent of clinicians and they’re anchored in passion, so although they may be specialised they are rarely considered hard work. On the other hand, extracting information from patients and communicating to them the state of their dental health, your diagnosis and treatment plan, while ensuring patient consent, is hard work. To state the obvious; providing dental services is your core business and the law says that patients must understand and accept the procedures you need to do before you do them.
Yaltara Software has taken a leap from the conventional approach of patient education and treatment planning to launch time-efficient, computer-based brochures, illustrator and planner. They have developed a patient education system that is designed to individualise education to meet the patient’s needs while keeping the clinician in the driver’s seat. They are simple, easy, affordable, income generating and automatically records an entry in the patient’s computer record of what you have accessed, printed and burned to CD, including the amount of time spent in your session. This unique tracking feature is the result of program coding that is encrypted for authenticity and offers versatility for integration with today’s dental software management systems.
The Yaltara system comes as a set of CD-ROMs that you install on the computer hard drive giving clinicians three case presentation functions; Patient Information Brochures (PIB), Case Illustrator (CI) and Visual Planner (VP). PIB creates single page A4 pamphlets, CI creates anatomical animations while VP creates treatment plans in real time. Used individually or in combination, the system provides patient education, patient inspiration and patient motivation by accommodating to the learning styles of the individuals.
Two complete Modules are currently available in Patient Information Brochures (PIB) and Case Illustrator (CI): Total Tooth Replacement and Preventive Dentistry. Also available is Visual Planner (VP) making treatment planning easy.
The PIB program is a comprehensive library of printable, easy-to-understand brochures that allow the clinician to select the information required by the patient with regards to health conditions, procedures, instructions, techniques etc. The Total Tooth Replacement Module includes patient education brochures in both the PIB (80) and CI (58), while Preventive Dentistry offers 140 brochures in PIB alone. That’s an abundant difference to what is currently available in printed literature today, and it’s only the start.
In addition to written information, the Case Illustrator (CI) program gives the clinician the ability to present a visual animation demonstration specific to the individual characteristics or concerns of the patient by simply entering a few of their clinical details. There are more than half a million anatomical animations to illustrate the pathway of the patient’s specific conditions from health to present and from treatment to health.
The Visual Planner (VP) allows clinicians to create a patient’s treatment plan right alongside the patient in just a matter of minutes. Your schematic treatment plan can be animated on screen, printed or burned onto a CD for the patient to take with them. The treatment plan you have developed for the patient is automatically recorded in the patient’s permanent computer record. This immediate documentation reduces the task of writing up copious amounts of notes. It also allows the clinician to print the summary so that both parties can sign off on what has been presented and agreed to. It gets you back into your clinical excellence knowing your patient has received and comprehended the simple or complicated prescribed dental needs.
The story of the seed that spawned the Yaltara system is the same story told by many professionals: a clinician’s exhaustion of time and tolerance in the delivery of case presentations, instructions and education. There’s personal satisfaction for clinicians in presenting lengthy consultations, delivered face-to-face to patients in soft, slow tones that are punctuated with approving and affirmative responses and body language. However, more often than not this time investment is later revealed to be futile as observed in the behaviours of patients at subsequent visits. It’s become apparent that only a small percentage of the patients actually fully comprehend their proposed treatment plan and how to manage and maintain their oral health.
A one-size-fits-all approach has never worked for dentistry, yet we continue to use this approach in our communication with patients on their oral health needs. Our individual, biological and developmental characteristics mean we perceive and learn using three perceptual strengths: visual, auditory and tactile/kinaesthetic (Dunn & Dunn 1993).
The majority of people are visual learners where information is best remembered when organised with visual cues, diagrams and pictures. Next are the auditory learners who remember best when they listen to information, which is followed closely by the tactile/kinaesthetic learner who need to do something hands-on or practical in order to process the information. The Yaltara system provides you with an extraordinary set of patient education tools to enhance the outcomes of communication with your patients by offering them information based in all three perceptual strengths.
Clinicians by virtue of their extensive studies are analytical learners and thinkers who process information by its step-by-step, fact-by-fact details with a defined goal to reach. Surprisingly, the majority of the people process information quite differently by virtue as global learners and thinkers who first need to know what has to be learned and why they need to learn it. Once they have grasped this understanding only then do they concentrate on the details (Morse, et al 1998).
A classic example is the concept of “treatment”. The patient sees treatment in very simple terms: removing the teeth stops the pain. Our ability to provide a variety of learning stimulus assists the patients in understanding discussions on important issues of saving teeth and the restoration of function, structure, stability and aesthetics.
The Yaltara system puts you in control to select a communication pathway that can help you utilise patient contact time more efficiently and effectively for patient and clinician. You’ll see a quantifiable difference through the increased treatment plan acceptance of inspired and motivated patients who have learned the value of good oral health.
So if you thought there was nothing new to see or learn the team at Yaltara Software will ensure you go back to the office with a smile on your face. You’ll find them teamed up with Design Technology Gizmo based in Columbus, Ohio USA who can facilitate your experience of how easily the programmes can be integrated with practice management software systems.