Negotiating with Children in Dentistry

2016 Words9 Pages
Real Life Negotiation Analysis The Case Iris, a 6-year-old preschooler, came to me for her first dental visit, accompanied by her mother. On examination, Iris was found to have 2 decayed teeth, one of which was in urgent need of treatment. However, she was too apprehensive to even get onto the dental chair. My target for the visit was to persuade Iris into cooperation, and fill both her decayed teeth within 40 minutes. The Negotiation Process/Tactics Initially, much time was spent on building trust, establishing rapport and generating liking and reciprocity – and the efforts paid off well. Iris was also led to a voluntary verbal commitment to try her best to cooperate. However, Iris became restless midway, and started throwing a tantrum. Unable to talk her out of it, I invited her mother out of the treatment room, and made use of authority and voice control to enable completion of treatment. The outcome – treatment completed in 55 minutes, and Iris left smiling. Post-Negotiation Analysis 1. The importance of the IRP Framework (see Appendix 2) in negotiations where human psychology is the main factor affecting outcome: Unlike the past negotiation exercises, this is a negotiation involving no/few numbers/calculations – it deals almost entirely with the less tangible/fathomable science of human psychology. As such, negotiating in a manner which can successfully elicit the desired human emotions/behaviours/reactions is the key to achieving a favourable outcome. I consider the highlight of the negotiation to be Iris’ tantrum-throwing, and the turning point my gesture of making her mother leave the treatment room. Having gotten Iris to A) witness her mother follow my instructions and B) find herself “stranded”, I was able to: A) Change Iris’ perception of the distribution of power, and consequently B) Make Iris realize that her target of leaving
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