Sir, the amount of energy and time we put into our education and our profession puts us into a special standing, thereby affecting our daily and social life. Thus, it is normal that our practice becomes a reflection of our ego and we identify our work with ourselves.

Most patients are more than eager to leave a positive internet review for the treating dentist or dental clinic. Unfortunately, there is always the possibility that patients can leave poor reviews, occasionally without giving any prior indication of their dissatisfaction. Even for seasoned professionals, it can be difficult to accept negative comments personally, when made in public. The question here is: how do we as professionals respond to this?

  • Maintaining calmness. If you can identify the patient, call them to discuss the situation. Patients may be eager to address a concern, especially if they can speak directly with the dentist. Listen attentively and respond compassionately rather than defensively. Admit your mistake, especially if you think it was unfair, and ask what you can do to make things right. After you have fixed the issue, respectfully ask the patient to remove their poor review

  • Respond to the review if you can't identify the patient. Simmer down, enter your response in another word processing program and sleep on it for a day before submitting. Avoid becoming defensive and express your desire to resolve the patient's problem, just as you would over the phone. Discussing the content you want to publish in response with a staff member may be a good option. Negative reviews might come from irrational patients or those who are not even your patients. You can contact the review site and ask them to delete the superfluous or unfair review by explaining why the review is irrelevant or unjust, and ask that it be deleted

  • In the end, everyone gets criticised for some reason or another. If you followed these suggestions and still do not reach a sensible agreement, the best approach moving forward is to invite your satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, which will quickly drive the negative review to the bottom of the page. Have a team member or employ a monitoring agency to check the review sites on a frequent basis to guarantee that poor reviews are identified and responded to quickly.

People are frequently so engrossed in their own weltanschauung (world view), that the evaluation almost always reflects that thinking and may be readily addressed with a simple reframing and better communication.