Heart Your Smile- what’s the point?

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You may have read about the launch of The Heart Your Smile campaign in October at the BDTA Dental Showcase. What is it all really about?

The goal of the campaign is to the change the public's perception of dentistry, increase attendance and reinstate the dental team's position as trusted members of the local community.

We will take this message to the public in a new fun way ONCE we have enough of the profession behind us and we have hit certain key measurements.

Doing what we have done before will just give us the same results. Using campaigns never seen in dentistry before, based on humour, powerful visuals and collective effort, we believe we can make a measurable difference.

We will be starting from the ground-up, using the dental teams of the future (the students). Our estimate is to launch the public facing campaign 12 months from now but that depends on your help!

We invite you to read the 9-point manifesto for change and start living these values with your entire teams.

We would love to help you engage in your local community and give back – few actions are more powerful than acts of kindness towards our patients and communities.

We are stakeholders in dental health which is entwined with a person's general health but have we done enough to ensure the public know this, like us, believe in us and come to us? Let's start with the patients on each or our own doorsteps.

Ten industry leaders got together to start this campaign and over the months hundreds of positive members of the industry have joined us.

So far, it has all been self-funded as we passionately believe UK dentistry is ripe for change and the time is NOW! We will be reaching out to the whole industry to help fund this campaign as it touches more people but it is not about us.

The more people overcome their fear of dentistry, see the long-term health benefits of a healthy mouth and value us as part of the local community the larger the our industry grows. Come join us, don't be left behind– the industry is changing whether you like it or not.

What we want from each member of your team:

1. Read and sign the manifesto and receive a Heart Your Smile badge in return.
2. Start engaging with other members about how you can give back to your community. It is not all about money; your time and expertise are needed.

Start spreading the word that Dentistry in the UK is changing for the better, find out more at our stand at the Dentistry Show and the BDA conference.

The Heart Your Smile movement

For more information visit:

Website: www.heartyoursmile.co.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/HeartYourSmile

Twitter: @heart_yoursmile

YouTube: heartyoursmile

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Hiya, I joined specifically to comment on this thread after reading it as I think this has the potential to be an excellent idea based on targetting

I am a mere patient rather than a dental professional and would like if I may to share my relationship with dentistry

As a child my "parent" (singular) had a drinking problem, so as ridiculous as it might sound I never had the ethos of regularly brushing my teeth drummed into me as a child so I was off to a bad start in dental terms

I was then faced with having a couple of clearly crooked teeth that were never deemed worth correcting and the dentist I had in my early teens wouldnt have seemed out of place extracting information from terrorists in a black ops site

So by early adulthood although I was already becoming self conscious about my teeth my experiences so far hadnt exactly made me look forward to visiting the dentist, and having teeth that should really have been corrected but werent kind of took away much of the necessity as no matter what I would never have a "nice" smile if that makes sense, which makes it easier to slip down a slope of ever increasing mediocre

The problem there is that ever decreasing mediocre eventually becomes dreadful. And after a bout of depression my already "not very good" teeth became dreadful. At which point not only was I extremely self conscious about them in normal social settings, but also felt self conscious about letting a dentist see them which I do realise sound silly

But my previous experiences left me feeling that to a dentist someone with such horible teeth would be deserving of good treatment and more so as I was (still am) getting free dental work

This led to a further spiral where my teeth by now were quite literally crumbling in my mouth which made it harder to want to face a dentist with them as the only viable option I am sure would be total removal of the lot and then no teeth as I understand it for 6 months

My point here, and apologies for the legnth of the post is that all of this has had an enormous and indescribeable impact on both my social and work lives as well as my confidence and self image all because I got off to a bad start in terms of my early impressions of and experiences with the dental profession which then got compounded over the years with having the wrong tooth removed on two occassions and one extremely abrupt and rough dentist

So in my opinion any scheme that aims to improve the public opinion of dentists and encourages them to put more priority on looking after their teeth rather than being complacent, apathetic or even scared is an excellent idea and might hopefully stop other people going down the same road that I did

I do sometimes wonder if dentists actually forget that as much as we "should" only see going to the dentist in terms of it giving us nice teeth, the other side of that coin is that it often causes severe discomfort and its not that uncommon for dentists to not be quite as "gentle" as I suspect they think theyre being.

One example of that, is I have on several occassions and by several different dentists discovered cuts on the inside of my lips from where they have leaned on my lips so hard my lower teeth cut into it which due to the anaesthetic I didnt even realise at the time

So for some people we do need some "encouragement" to offset any bad experiences we might have encountered and to nudge us into prioritising our dental health as it should be

Apologies for taking up so much of your time and good luck with the scheme

Mike

Posted by Ubermik 11/5/12 at 23:19

Mike,
Thank you for your honest patient feedback.
I am sorry you have had bad experiences wrt my profession, and I hope you don't lose faith in all of us!
My own teeth are very far from 'perfect', as I was induled/spolit as a child - but that is no excuse.......most of it was my fault.
Treatment feedback always helps.
I hope your dental problems are resolved satisfactorially.

Posted by docholliday 12/5/12 at 19:26