We thought we would explain step by step what your first journey with us will be...

1) Before arrival to the clinic, you will be contacted by our reception team to secure your appointment and answer any initial queries you may have i.e. travel directions, availability and services. 

2) Arrive at the clinic ideally 10 minutes before your scheduled appointment (and park in one of our free ample car parking spaces). 

3) On arrival into the clinic, our friendly reception team will great you with a smile and offer you a complimentary beverage while you fill in your medical history questionnaire and dental health assessment form.

4) Once completed one of our highly skilled and amiable dentists will come and introduce themselves and bring you in to one our consultation rooms. 

5) The consultation will then involve discussing your dental and medical history and any areas of your dental health or smile you would like addressed. 

6) Our dentist will then carry out an extra oral examination, which essentially involves checking that there are no lumps or bumps or abnormal swellings with the glands and lymph nodes of your head and neck. Then we will check your jaw joint for any popping or clicking and palpate some of your facial muscles to check for any tension from clenching or grinding. 

7) Next will be the intra oral examination, where the dentist will check all your gums/tongue (top,sides and below)/roof of mouth/cheeks for any abnormal lumps, discolouration or abnormality. This is part of ones screening for oral cancer which is incredibly important. 

8) The next stage is to check all the teeth one by one and look at your bite. The dentist tends to record this information in abbreviated forms for efficiency, you may not initially know what they stand for.... but rest assured this will all be explained once the review is completed.

9) We will also take measurement of your gums to check for any inflammation or bleeding and assess for gum disease. 

10) X-Rays will then be taken to help us diagnose for any abnormalities, decay, infection and bone levels (a small X-ray equivalent to eating a large banana in terms of radiation for those interested!). Sometimes if one has lots missing teeth, previous extensive dental work and wisdom teeth we may carry out scanning X-ray called an OPG (orthopantomogram) to get a better general assessment.

11) Finally we may take photographs and a digital scan of your teeth. This is important to have a baseline recording of your teeth. The benefit of this is:  i) should you ever fracture or damage your teeth ie. fall over a break a front tooth, we could 3D print your original teeth from the baseline scan and restore your tooth in the exact size, shape, colour as it was! ii) as we get older we may tend to grind our teeth down so a yearly digital scan of your teeth can give us exact measurements of how much damage is occurring and wear exactly so we can prevent it if needs be. How cool is technology?!

12) The dentist will then go through all the information they have collected and present this to you in an easy to understand format. They will then recommend (if any) what treatment is deemed essential and what treatments would be ideal. This will then be catered to everyones financial and time constraints. We may also recommend a session of teeth cleaning and polishing with our hygienist to provide you with a customised individual cleaning plan to help keep your teeth healthy. 
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13) At the end of your appointment your dentist will guide you to reception for any bookings you wish to make and will be available for any further questions should you wish to discuss (and if you forget your question just contact us later and we will be happy to help).

So there it is! We hope now you can appreciate why we need a lot of time in our first consultation with you to get to know you and give you the best assessment we possibly can.  We do things a little different from most... but then we think that is what makes us special!