Kimberli Irvin was about six years into her career before she found a dental practice that aligned with her purpose to truly help people. When she stepped into her role at Wagner Dental, she knew she had found the right place to help patients get healthy and stay healthy for their whole lives. She explains, “we serve our patients by utilizing an approach to dentistry that is whole health focused.”
Unfortunately, for most patients, it isn’t easy to find a dentist that treats patients with this modern approach. Irvin knew there had to be more out there than the old school “drill and fill” dentistry, a practice model that resulted in increased fear and pain for patients and was unnecessarily invasive. “Preventative care is a top priority for us at Wagner Dental. [Dentistry] can get really stuck in ‘we’re just going to clean your teeth; we’re going to do a filling.’ [But] at Wagner Dental, we approach dentistry differently. Our diagnosis and treatment options take into account your overall health and risk factors.”
As a patient at Wagner Dental, you might notice something unusual: they take your blood pressure and consult you about your entire medical history. If any of the medical history or results of diagnostic testing is unusual, they refer their patients to see a primary care physician to ensure they are healthy enough to be treated.
Wagner Dental’s dentists and hygienists take pride in their role as healthcare providers.
After all, according to Irvin, “Only one in 10 people see their primary care physician every year, but one in five people visit a dentist once a year. What that means to our dentists is that we need to be the first line of defense for systemic disease for the patients in our practice.” As soon as the patients first open their mouths, the trained eye of Wagner Dental’s dentists and hygienists can use the look and feel of their teeth and the tissue in the mouth to begin to determine their overall health, from periodontal disease to type-II diabetes.
Kimberli explains that one of the most common diagnoses in dentistry is sleep apnea. “The minute someone opens their mouth to say, ‘ah,’ we can see how well they sleep at night. We can see into their airway, which affects the function of our whole body. [We need] adequate oxygen to function properly. Our next question is typically, ‘has anyone ever told you that you snore?’”
For one of her patients, that question changed her life.
A sleep study showed that she stopped breathing more than 100 times in a night. At 32, she was exhausted all the time and had trouble maintaining her weight. “If you’re not getting good, solid sleep, certain parts of your body can’t store memories or rejuvenate,” Irvin elaborates. “Her hormones were all out of whack because she wasn’t getting enough oxygen to feed the systems in the body that adjust and regulate hormones.”
She was fitted with a mouthguard-like device to help keep her airway open while she slept. Three months later, she had zero episodes of breathing cessation while she slept. Even better, she had energy again and no longer had trouble maintaining her weight.
One visit in the right dentist’s chair had a tremendous impact on her overall and oral health.
The patient experience at Wagner Dental is intended to have a concierge-style feel. You’re offered water while you wait. When you sit down in the chair, you’ll notice music playing, and a blanket is made available to you. While these things may seem small, they have a tremendous impact on the patient experience. Kimberli notes, “this sets the mood and helps patients feel safe.” She also adds, “we are far more aware of patients' psychological needs when it comes to healthcare than ever before.”
As dental providers, they recognize how sensitive the mouth is for their patients. She means this in a literal sense, as their practice involves placing their hands directly into their patients’ mouths. In the case of extraction, that’s a part of someone you’re removing, after all. But on a deeper, psychological level, as well. Let’s face it—our smiles say a lot about how we feel and how the world sees us. And more often than not, how we see ourselves.
For many people, the dentist’s chair is intimidating—especially for those who need it the most. “Patients get scared there is so much to be done that they can’t afford it [or] that they don’t have the time. When patients have been underserved in health or in dentistry, it’s so overwhelming for them to comprehend where to start.” Irvin explains, “we’ve been able to take everything they need and break it into bite-sized pieces.”
One of her most memorable patients was a young woman who came into Wagner Dental complaining of pain in her mouth. She hid her smile out of habit. Kimberli asked her if there was anything about her smile or her teeth that she didn’t like. The patient burst into tears. Kimberli elaborates, “patients come in like that, expecting a laundry list [of problems]. First, I said, we need to take care of your pain. Then, we are going to clean your teeth and make sure everything starts to look healthy. And then, we are going to start to address how we can improve your confidence by restoring some of your missing teeth. And we did. We did one tooth at a time, and she ended up having a beautiful smile.”
Two years later, her patient, a researcher at a local university, was published for her work. In the headshot alongside it, she was smiling from ear to ear. “Transforming smiles is our job, but transforming patients' confidence is our passion,” shares Irvin.
That’s the Wagner Dental approach.
“[Dentists] need to be the first line of defense for systemic disease.”
“Transforming smiles is our job, but transforming patients' confidence is our passion.”
