Clinical Storytelling
Section 1: Episode 10
Subtitles Available
How Microscope Photo and Video Improve Case Acceptance
Summary
In this video, Dr. Michael Wenzel explains how the dental operating microscope transforms patient communication by turning clinical findings into compelling visual stories. While accurate data and technical explanations are essential, they often fail to earn patient trust on their own. Humans are emotional decision-makers, and storytelling—supported by clear microscope photos and videos—creates understanding on a visceral level.
By using the microscope as a real-time documentation and visualization tool, dentists can show patients exactly what they see: intact tooth structure, exposed caries, hidden decay, cracks, or additional canals. These images act as “pages of a picture book,” allowing patients to mentally visualize both the current problem and the likely future if it goes untreated. This shifts the conversation away from blind trust and toward shared understanding.
Through clinical storytelling, the dentist becomes the guide, the patient becomes the hero, and disease becomes the enemy they face together. This approach dramatically improves case acceptance, especially in situations involving unexpected findings during restorative dentistry, endodontics, or routine examinations.
The process is remarkably efficient—capturing three to four microscope photos per procedure takes only seconds—yet it generates outsized returns in patient trust, goodwill, and clarity. Clinical storytelling doesn’t replace clinical skill; it amplifies it. When used effectively, the dental microscope becomes one of the most powerful tools for patient education, communication, and trust-building in modern dentistry.
For comprehensive dental microscope training designed for the general dentist, you can check out my AGD PACE approved online course filled with 91 other high end video episodes just like the one you watched above.
Here's some more sample footage from the microscope, specifically with an iOS device (iPad/iPhone).
Transcript
Human beings are emotional creatures.
You can show them the most accurate data or give them the most technically perfect explanation on the planet, but that doesn't mean you'll earn their trust.
Start telling a human a really good story, on the other hand, and their attention is yours.
It's why a completely fictional story about dragons and magic keeps us reading voluntarily, while a truthful textbook of facts requires the threat of a difficult exam to even take it off the shelf.
I've seen this time and time again in my own career while trying to explain periodontal disease or caries risk to patients.
The number of patient eyeballs I'm responsible for glazing over is too many to count.
That all changed when I started using the microscope.
Without knowing it at the time, I started leveraging the microscope as a storytelling machine to help patients understand what was going on in their mouths on a much more emotional, and I'd say even visceral, level.
I've made it a principle of mine to rely on a patient's trust only as a last resort, and instead tell a story whenever I can.
Ironically, by taking trust out of the equation, this principle tends to generate even more of it.
To be clear, when I say story, I'm trying to get a little movie playing in their minds that accurately represents the present, but also reasonably forecasts the future.
Through storytelling with your patients, you can posture yourself as the guide and the patient as the hero, and the unexpected cavity or crack as the enemy that you can face down together.
With the ability to instantaneously take photos and videos of exactly what you see and then display them on a connected monitor, the microscope gives you powerful emotional anchors, like pages of a storybook, to tell a story with every procedure you do.
Here's an everyday example:
Let's say a dentist is prepping an interproximal box, in a second premolar to remove a cavity.
Once they break the mesial wall of the enamel, they're surprised there's caries on the distal of the first premolar.
Now ask yourself, as the patient, would you rather take the dentist's word for it that there's another cavity, or would you prefer him or her to sit you up and show you a series of crystal-clear pictures of what's going on?
Let's imagine the latter situation.
First, you see your teeth intact before the procedure, then you see an image of the first exposed brown cavity, and finally, you're shown the hidden cavity on the other tooth.
And then, what if instead of telling you that you need to fix it, the dentist creates a little movie in your mind of the nature of decay and how it slowly but surely invades towards the core of the tooth until it overwhelms it and causes a toothache?
After creating a clear picture in your mind of what the future looks like without treatment, the dentist asks, "I know you weren't expecting this, and neither was I, to be honest, but if you'd like, we can fix this extra cavity today while you're numb.
Alternatively, we can book you back for another time and solve the problem then." I can tell you right now, 95% of people will want you to fix the extra cavity on the spot and then thank you sincerely for it.
While the microscope photos won't tell the story for you, they give you the pages of the picture book that act as powerful guides for the patient to viscerally understand the story you're telling them.
The most beautiful thing about all of this is how effortless it is to take the photos once you have the scope set up properly and you're proficient with it.
I'm talking one to two seconds per photo max.
I take about three to four photos per procedure, which costs me less than ten seconds.
In return, I generate huge amounts of trust and goodwill with my patients.
That's a pretty good trade if you ask me.
The same technique can be used for unexpected cracks under old restorations, extra canals during endodontics, and especially during routine exams when a patient has no concerns, but you do.
Storytelling is powerful, and the microscope amplifies that power magnificently.
Once you stop relying on your patient's trust for treatment planning, you'll find yourself with more trust than you know what to do with.