Breaking bad news
Welcome

Breaking bad news to a patient is one of the hardest tasks that dental professionals face.

There are many occasions where this may be necessary, including:

• The patient needs have a dental clearance
• You have found a suspicious lesion which requires investigation more… for example a speckled red/white patch on the oral mucosa
• You must tell the patient they definitely have cancer
• The cost of treatment to meet their aspirations will be much larger than they expect
• You have seen something in their mouth that suggests a serious underlying systemic illness more… for example gingival enlargement, petechiae and ulcerations that might suggest leukaemia
• The patient requires surgical removal of a lesion

Sometimes the bad news will be entirely unexpected, and sometimes the patient may have identified a problem and know that something may need to be done about it.

This course, for general dental practice, centres around delivering bad news about cancer, but has relevance for all situations where you need to tell the patient something that is going to upset them.