Book review - Assertiveness

Do you sometimes find yourself sitting back, avoiding confrontation and later thinking "Why didn't I speak my mind?". Or alternatively do you often find your fuse is too short and you instead reflect saying "I wish I could have kept my composure and got my point across better without losing my cool". If so then perhaps a book like this may help.

I wasn't sure whether this book would be at all useful but thought it was worth a look just in case it turned out it was. I expected it to be full of wishy-washy advice with very little actionable content. However I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised. It isn't a big book. Just a couple of hours will allow you to get through it fairly easily but within its pages are quite a few good, practical ideas and approaches that can be implemented to help you change how you react to situations in which you may have a tendency to either be overly passive or quick to jump to overly aggressive actions.


I will quickly admit that my innate nature is fairly passive. That may make me easy going, but also leaves me wishing I could have found better ways of making my points or speaking my mind so that a better long term solution can be achieved. In relation to dentistry this could sometimes result in tricky situations in which patients who have multiple possible options available to them being unsure how to proceed when they are used to a more "old-school" approach in which a dentist just says "you need a crown, come back next week". I suppose that might be one reason why I have created so many frameworks for pt explanation such as exam reports, complex treatment consideration packs, written post-op instructions, OHI postcards etc. All of these things help to standardise the advice being given making it easier for me to ensure all points are covered and giving the patient something to refer too other than just the words they are hearing me say. These ideas and many others can be found here: http://www.drchrisharper.co.uk/blog/category/patient-demonstration


I will definitely be considering using some of the techniques mentioned in this book in the future to make sure I can act more assertively in an appropriate way in certain challenging situations. If you are interested in finding out more about some of the ideas in the book, here are the summary pages:

If you wish to read this book for yourself it can be found on amazon here:
https://amzn.to/2K913Kv