here here

I agree. Patients often don't realize what is involved in dental
treatment. Many patients tell me after a procedure how easy it was,
while I've been working hard . . .  ;-)

(And on the other hand, I don't want patients to think that extractions
should be "routine," either . . . they are better motivated to practice
prevention when they know that most teeth have a decent possibility of
being preserved for a lifetime, and we don't "routinely" extract them.)

I infer from your post that if we make the patient's experience easy,
which is commendable, we still need to guard against the possibility
that lay persons may think that dental treatment is so easy that no
great skill is required.

Perhaps the way we make our patients' experience easy has affected our
government officials here in California, who seem to think that they
can make dental treatment cheaper for the government programs by
licensing "dental applicants" who would never be eligible for licensure
in the other 49 states due to lack of education. It appears that our
legislators are so impressed with the ease of their own dental
treatment by modern dentists, that they think anybody can do it, even
without education or experience.

But that's fodder for another thread.

- dentaldoc