Healthcare Report: Interview Summary of Retired Dentist's Practice

This report summarizes an interview with a retired dentist, Randy J. Heard, DDS. The interview explores his career as a general dentist, including his motivations for entering the profession, which were to treat patients and own his business. The report details his daily duties, such as dental exams, x-rays, and restorations, as well as his interactions with a team of employees and other health professionals. The report emphasizes the importance of protecting patient confidentiality through HIPAA compliance. It also outlines the medical terminology used in the practice and the dentist's approach to communicating with patients in layman's terms. The interview highlights the significance of understanding medical terminology for effective communication and patient care. The report also includes the references used in the interview summary.

Interview Summary
0 | P a g e

Summary
The interview is taken of a retired dentist named as Randy J. Heard, DDS who was a dentist last
year. This retired dentist was a sole proprietor for about 396 years. The primary motive of this
dentist is to treat and cure patients suffering from various types of pain. Also, another reason for
choosing this profession is to own his business so that he do not have to depend on others. As per
the interview conducted, it is found that the medical specialization of this retired dentist name
Randy J. Heard is General Dentistry, and his basic daily duties after becoming a dentist were
dental exams, x-rays, oral cancer screenings and restorations (Wang, Gao & Lo, 2015). Apart
from this, other daily basic duties of this retired dentist were the diagnosis of problems,
extractions, crowns and root canals checkup of the patients. This retired dentist does not perform
any special duty related to dentist activity and he was doing only general basic dentistry activity.
The interview revealed that the retired dentist had an associate group that consists of front desk
employees as well as several hygienists, and this group was made to interact with other health
professionals in the setting. He stated that all health professionals had great respect for each other
and they enjoyed each other’s company. In it noticed that to protect the confidentiality as well as
rights of every patient this retired dentist enforced HIIPPA in the operational function only to
ensure that all of the employees were respecting every patient's health information (Neel,
Chrzanowski, Salih, Kim & Knowles, 2014).
In other words, the terminology that was mainly used by this retired dentist in his workplace was
freely spoken with the patients, other professionals, employees as well as with the insurance
companies too. Apart from this, the medical terminology of the dental category that need to be
used would be prophy, x-rays, exam, restorations, cavity, crown, root canal, bridge and so on.
According to this retired dentist, prophy is a dental cleaning procedure; cavity determines the
decayed area in tooth region, a crown is the full coverage of tooth, restoration is the cleaning the
decay portion and filling the area with the material (Kishore et al., 2014). Also, a bridge is
considered for the tooth replacement whereas root canal refers to the removal of the tooth nerve.
The retired dentist suggests that the medical terminology was mainly used only during diagnosis,
patient record keeping, and laboratory order and also during internal meetings or discussion so
that it helped him to communicate easily with both patients as well as colleagues in the
workplace. It is noted that the patients do not understand the medical terminology and so in that
1 | P a g e

case the retired dentist use layman’s term so that the patient can easily understand the doctor’s
language. At the last of the interview the dentist suggests that it is essential to understand the
medical terminology because it will help the doctors to communicate easily (Fontana et al.,
2016). He also suggested that miscommunication in giving medicine can lead to harmful results,
so it becomes essential to understand the medical terminology.
2 | P a g e

References
Fontana, M., Guzmán-Armstrong, S., Schenkel, A. B., Allen, K. L., Featherstone, J., Goolsby,
S., ... & Schulte, A. (2016). Development of a core curriculum framework in cardiology
for US dental schools. Journal of dental education, 80(6), 705-720.
Kishore, M., Panat, S. R., Aggarwal, A., Agarwal, N., Upadhyay, N., & Alok, A. (2014).
Evidence-based dental care: integrating clinical expertise with systematic research.
Journal of clinical and diagnostic research: JCDR, 8(2), 259.
Neel, E. A. A., Chrzanowski, W., Salih, V. M., Kim, H. W., & Knowles, J. C. (2014). Tissue
engineering in dentistry. Journal of dentistry, 42(8), 915-928.
Wang, G., Gao, X., & Lo, E. C. (2015). Public perceptions of dental implants: a qualitative
study. Journal of dentistry, 43(7), 798-805.
3 | P a g e