Hand Dental Symptom Messages to a Person, Every Time
This recipe makes sure a message about pain, swelling, bleeding, a broken tooth or a reaction to treatment always reaches a person. AeroChat gives no clinical advice. It hands the conversation over at once, tells the patient a person is coming, and sends your after-hours instruction when the clinic is closed. Set it up before any other workflow goes live. Part of the dental clinic workflows.
What happens today
A patient messages at 8pm, the day after an extraction: “still bleeding a bit, is it normal?”. The clinic WhatsApp is on a phone at the front desk, and nobody sees it until the morning. Or someone sees it, is not sure what to say, and waits for the dentist. Either way the patient waits, worried, with no instruction.
Symptom messages are few, but they decide how a patient feels about your clinic, and they are the messages where a wrong answer causes harm.
The flow that works
- Any message, in any workflow, that describes a symptom stops what AeroChat is doing.
- AeroChat tells the patient a member of the team will reply, and roughly when.
- It asks two short questions your team needs: what they are feeling, and whether they had treatment at your clinic recently and what it was. It asks nothing else.
- It tags the conversation “urgent symptom”, hands it to your team and sends a notification to the person on duty.
- Outside clinic hours, it sends your after-hours instruction, written by your dentists, for example a number to call or when to go to the emergency department.
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
If a patient describes any symptom at any point in a conversation, follow these steps, even in the middle of another task such as a booking.
- Treat these as symptoms: pain, toothache, swelling, bleeding, a broken or chipped tooth, a lost filling or crown, a knocked-out tooth, a loose tooth, an ulcer or sore, numbness that has not worn off, fever, difficulty opening the mouth, difficulty swallowing or breathing, or any reaction to treatment or medication.
- Do not give any clinical advice. Do not say whether a symptom is normal. Do not suggest medication, home remedies or what to do next, except our after-hours instruction.
- Reply: “Thank you for telling us. A member of our team will reply to you shortly.” During clinic hours, add “within 15 minutes” (example). Outside clinic hours, send our after-hours instruction from the knowledge base.
- Ask: “Can you tell us what you are feeling, and whether you had treatment with us recently?” Do not ask for anything else.
- Tag the conversation “urgent symptom”, hand it to a person, and notify the team member on duty.
- If the patient mentions difficulty breathing or swallowing, swelling spreading to the eye or neck, or bleeding that will not stop, send our emergency instruction straight away, before anything else.
Reply in the patient’s language.
Have your dentists write the after-hours and emergency instructions before you paste it. Change the reply time to one your team can keep.
What to connect
- Your after-hours and emergency instructions. Upload them to the AeroChat knowledge base, in the exact wording your dentists approve. Include your after-hours contact number if you have one, when to go to an emergency department, and when to call local emergency services.
- Handover, tags and notifications. AeroChat’s own handover passes the conversation to your team. Set who gets notified during clinic hours and after hours.
- The AeroChat mobile app. Install it on the phone of whoever is on duty, so a handover reaches them away from the front desk.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What you still decide
- The list of symptoms, if you want to add to it.
- The after-hours and emergency instructions, written by a dentist.
- Who is on duty, and how fast they reply during and after clinic hours.
Clinical judgment stays with your dentists. AeroChat’s job is to get the message to them quickly with the right details.
The result to expect
Every symptom message reaches a person, tagged and with the treatment history question already asked. Patients who message after hours get your instruction at once instead of silence until the morning. Your team stops worrying about which message in a busy inbox is the one that matters.
Test it often. Send a few symptom messages yourself each month, in the words patients use, such as “my tooth really hurts” or “my gum is swollen”, and check each one is handed over.
Next: appointment booking. See also live chat handover.
Set this one up first
Paste this recipe before any other, then message your clinic number saying your tooth is swollen. Check the handover reaches the person on duty.
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