PESHAWAR: A workshop was arranged for the students and trainees of the Khyber College of Dentistry (KCD) on “strategies to manage patient with dental anxiety”.
The workshop was conducted by Khan Hassan Afridi of the faculty of Federal University Science and Technology, Karachi, who is also a consultant psychologist at Al-Sehat Centre, Karachi.
The workshop was attended by faculty members, postgraduate trainees and students. It was a three-day workshop which covered the topics dental anxiety, scientific and structure communication between dentist and patient, managing patient anxiety with progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) techniques and systematic desensitisation.
The workshop helped trainee medical officers (TMOs) to understand the importance of conscious and unconscious mind as well as what, how, why and when to talk to patients.
The participants now know how patients’ brains process verbal and nonverbal aspects in dentist communication and rapport building with patients. The workshop has taught them about the importance of body language during communication with patients and guided imagery and relation techniques to overcome patient anxiety.
The Khyber College of Dentistry Peshawar is the pioneer tertiary care hospital that is providing sophisticated dental healthcare facilities to the whole population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, PATA as well as Afghanistan. There are sufficient dental surgeons in BPS-17 to BPS-20 working under the administrative control of executive district officers of health in every district, but they just refer their patients to this institution for management.
Khyber College of Dentistry Dean Professor Dr Ghulam Rasool and his faculty offered the services of the faculty of this institution to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department to conduct refresher courses during summer vacations for dental surgeons working on various positions at the district level. The aim was to train them in different specialties of dentistry at Khyber College of Dentistry so that they can render better dental healthcare facilities at the doorsteps of the patients.
