“Best Dentist’s in Austin”

This past January, while awaiting a flight out of ABIA, my eye caught the magazine rack with a local magazines front cover entitled, “Austin’s Best Dentist’s". Hey, they were talking about my profession and my town, what’s up with this? After briefly skimming through the issue, I saw pictures and names of several dentists I personally know and many I didn’t recognize at all.

 

As I continued to skim the pages, it made me think about how this information was gathered or researched. Most likely some dentist’s patient works for this magazine and informs him/her of the cover feature and article “Best Dentist’s in Austin” in the upcoming issue. Now, I’m assuming the patient/writer asks the dentist for a list of “good” G.P. dentists and specialists in this town. This probably leads to these subsequent dentists to give more names, etc., etc.  I am also assuming this may have seemed entirely innocent at the time, but let’s think about what this may have created for the entire local dentists (and their patients) who were not listed in this particular magazine.

Perhaps if a good dentist does not see his or her name listed in this magazine, he or she may have mixed thoughts or reasons for being left out, questioning where and how this ‘survey’ was conducted? Secondly, if the patients of the unlisted good dentist don’t see their dentist’s name listed, what are they thinking? “If my dentist wasn’t listed, he or she must not be that good?”

It seems to be the new fad or sales approach to have local, state, and national magazines grab headlines about who the best professionals are, topics that in the past were never published but spoken about in the form of personal referrals.

 

My point is, we all like to have nice things said about us, but we need to be careful not to isolate our fellow professional members for the sake of promoting and selling magazines. Let’s leave professionals out of the newsprint for capitalist purposes and only report what our members as a dental society do to provide the very best oral health for all the citizens we serve.

 

I know most of the “Best Dentists in Austin” listed probably didn’t even participate in the magazine survey, but I’m still eager to hear your opinion. Let’s leave the magazines to report about the best BBQ places, best travel destinations, best beaches, etc., and not sell print at the expense of possibly tarnishing, by omission, the many good dentists we are blessed to have in our town.

 

You’ve read my opinion, what’s yours?

 

Please email our editor Dr. Kavin Kelp, at jk24k@yahoo.com or write to: Kavin Kelp, DDS, 4201 Bee Caves Rd., Suite C208, Austin, TX 78746.

 

Wayne Radwanski, DDS

President CADS 2008-09