This is another in our series of previews of the material inside our knowledge base. We have mindset material to help owners, managers and mentors understand key concepts and communicate them effectively to their Teams; Team-facing training material that directly shares important knowledge and expectations; and hands-on tools like conversation scripts, meeting agendas, decision trees, worksheets, and other methods to help you organize information and triage your ongoing process toward change and growth.
Dr. MacInnis always practiced under the assumption that if you weren't getting unsolicited compliments on your needle technique, you weren't doing it right. The cheek-shaking technique was how he earned those unsolicited compliments. He counted it among the items the success of his practice was built on.
In the Growth Platform, we've enshrined it as an Effective Action in Dentist's 4Blocks. We include a video to show not only the technique with the needle, but the right kind of patient communication to go with it — because technique alone isn't enough.
The words you use and the way you frame what you're doing matter as much as the physical skill itself. Patients who feel informed and prepared experience significantly less anxiety, which in turn makes the injection itself go more smoothly for both of you.
Dr. MacInnis discovered early in his career that the anticipation of an injection is often more stressful for patients than the injection itself. The cheek-shaking technique addresses both the physical sensation and the psychological experience of receiving an injection.
The technique works by engaging the patient's tactile senses in a way that competes with and reduces the perception of pain at the injection site. Combined with the right verbal framing, it becomes one of the most reliable tools in a dentist's chairside communication arsenal.