broken tooth

I went to NYU dental school to have them look at my teeth recently.
They found a cavity in a lower molar. That tooth already had a
filling. She did a heck of lot of drilling, I started wondering just
when she was going to stop. This was in peparation for an inlay. So
I left with a temporary or "provisional" inlay and an appointment. A
few days later while I was eating (just a pastry, nothing hard) the
tooth fractured and a big piece split off of it. This happened on
Friday. I called the student and she said come in Monday morning. I
don't think I want her to do the work on it, though. It's hard to
have confidence in her after the tooth she drilled broke off.
I paid them quite a bit of money for that work and it has now led to
damage in my tooth that is going to cost quite a bit more to fix. I
suppose it will require a crown now, but the top of the tooth is
jagged now so I really don't know what it will involve.
What do I do now? I want to tell them they should pay to fix the
problem. They will talk down to me and make me feel like some
inferior ignorant creature. That student and her supervisors never
gave any sign that they respected my intelligence or humanity. It's a
common problem with medical people.
I need a little moral support and advice about how to approach this.

gearhead wrote:
> I went to NYU dental school to have them look at my teeth recently.
> They found a cavity in a lower molar. That tooth already had a
> filling. She did a heck of lot of drilling, I started wondering just
> when she was going to stop. This was in peparation for an inlay. So
> I left with a temporary or "provisional" inlay and an appointment. A
> few days later while I was eating (just a pastry, nothing hard) the
> tooth fractured and a big piece split off of it. This happened on
> Friday. I called the student and she said come in Monday morning. I
> don't think I want her to do the work on it, though. It's hard to
> have confidence in her after the tooth she drilled broke off.
> I paid them quite a bit of money for that work and it has now led to
> damage in my tooth that is going to cost quite a bit more to fix. I
> suppose it will require a crown now, but the top of the tooth is
> jagged now so I really don't know what it will involve.
> What do I do now? I want to tell them they should pay to fix the
> problem. They will talk down to me and make me feel like some
> inferior ignorant creature. That student and her supervisors never
> gave any sign that they respected my intelligence or humanity. It's a
> common problem with medical people.
> I need a little moral support and advice about how to approach this.


Generally students are closely supervised in the clinic. Yes, it's a
big bureaucracy and it's tough to get the TLC you might in a private
practice.
But you're not going to solve the problem by assuming they won't take
you seriously. As a former faculty member at NYUCD, I can assure you
that they should take your concerns seriously. This doesn't mean they
prostrate themselves for the "mistakes" the student may have made.
There is no way to tell that any mistakes in fact were made at all.
Sometimes decay winds up being more extensive than can be seen
beforehand clinically or on an x-ray, and sometimes cusps can be
undermined, leading to fracture. You may in fact need a crown now. But
give them a chance to evaluate the situation and explain what's going
on, and what the appropriate treatment is.

Good luck,
Steve

Plus, if the patient is a clencher, a crown may have been the
best choice for the restoration anyway. It certainly sounds
like the remaining tooth structure was too weak for the circumstances,
whatever they might have been.

D

Steven Bornfeld wrote:

> gearhead wrote:
>
>> I went to NYU dental school to have them look at my teeth recently.
>> They found a cavity in a lower molar. That tooth already had a
>> filling. She did a heck of lot of drilling, I started wondering just
>> when she was going to stop. This was in peparation for an inlay. So
>> I left with a temporary or "provisional" inlay and an appointment. A
>> few days later while I was eating (just a pastry, nothing hard) the
>> tooth fractured and a big piece split off of it. This happened on
>> Friday. I called the student and she said come in Monday morning. I
>> don't think I want her to do the work on it, though. It's hard to
>> have confidence in her after the tooth she drilled broke off.
>> I paid them quite a bit of money for that work and it has now led to
>> damage in my tooth that is going to cost quite a bit more to fix. I
>> suppose it will require a crown now, but the top of the tooth is
>> jagged now so I really don't know what it will involve.
>> What do I do now? I want to tell them they should pay to fix the
>> problem. They will talk down to me and make me feel like some
>> inferior ignorant creature. That student and her supervisors never
>> gave any sign that they respected my intelligence or humanity. It's a
>> common problem with medical people.
>> I need a little moral support and advice about how to approach this.
>
>
>
> Generally students are closely supervised in the clinic. Yes, it's a
> big bureaucracy and it's tough to get the TLC you might in a private
> practice.
> But you're not going to solve the problem by assuming they won't take
> you seriously. As a former faculty member at NYUCD, I can assure you
> that they should take your concerns seriously. This doesn't mean they
> prostrate themselves for the "mistakes" the student may have made. There
> is no way to tell that any mistakes in fact were made at all. Sometimes
> decay winds up being more extensive than can be seen beforehand
> clinically or on an x-ray, and sometimes cusps can be undermined,
> leading to fracture. You may in fact need a crown now. But give them a
> chance to evaluate the situation and explain what's going on, and what
> the appropriate treatment is.
>
> Good luck,
> Steve