Dentist numbed wrong tooth- do I complain?

OP narrowly avoided harm.

She's also not asking for compensation, but whether to complain. Seeking compensation is not the purpose of all complaints.

OP, like all patients, should be able to rely on the relevant professional to do their job carefully and conscientiously. This includes treating/operating on the correct body part. She shouldn't need to be on alert for a dentist dealing with the wrong tooth. This isn't a fair expectation of patients, not least because patients often can't see what's going on and doctors (generally) further make this difficult because so many of them are so reluctant to explain procedures and results in detail.

I wouldn’t go back there again.

Ah, my apologies @ArcticBells
I though you must have thought the dentist was NHS as in my personal experience it is not difficult to find private dentists.

@ScrollingLeaves I never thought it was.

Utterly astonished that people think this is OK. It shows total incompetence on his part and I certainy wouldn't trust him anywhere near my teeth again.
And yes you should complain, luckily you spoke up OP but the next person he is useless with could be a child or a vulnerable person who doesn't have the confidence to speak up or complain when they are having the wrong unanaesthetised tooth filled.

Identifying the right part of the body to do a procedure on is surely basic skill level for a HCP. Or would his apologists be fine if they went into hospital for appendicitis and came out having had a hysterectomy, because you know its all roughly the same area and easy to get muddled ?

I would just change dentist if you’ve lost confidence in him.

You suffered no loss or harm. There's no compensation to be had

I mean it’s not like he’s not aware of it, I’m sure he’ll learn from it. What good would a complaint do? Someone tells him not to do it again…..and he feels more shit 🤷‍♀️

Well thank God you have a voice in your head, eh so no harm done?

A fully qualified consultant went to put a steroid injection in the wrong tendon and I had to stop him. Never crossed my mind to complain .

Im sure you have never made a mistake at work, op

This dentist was not an NHS dentist.

Well done.

‘Only human’ dentists can cause harm. If he had gone on to drill the wrong tooth he could have been sued. It might be in his interest to review his practices so as to ensure step by step mistake -avoiding checks in the future.

What if this had been a child who did not speak up ?

A polite letter to the dentist and the practice would not go amiss.

I would raise it- not really in a full on complaint way, but more to say you want to flag it- and to ensure the practice takes this seriously and looks at their procedure for double checking they are working on the correct tooth. No harm done in your case, but had he started drilling a perfectly healthy tooth, it wouldn’t have stayed healthy for long. The dentist shouldn’t assume the patient will be aware of which tooth they are working on- especially when a bit stressed and worried about the pain, I know I tend to try and focus on other thoughts at the dentist and could easily not click they had numbed the wrong tooth. Lucky that in your case he numbed an upper tooth so it was more obvious to you- if it had been the next door tooth it would have been harder for you to tell.

Its a very near miss.

In the NHS this would go down as a wrong site surgery / procedure, which is a 'never event' one of the most serious clinical incidents.

My registrar injected the wrong toe while I was completing some documentation, as a result, many meetings and a change in processes.

Why do you ask if you are “being unreasonable” if you only agree with people that echo your concern 🤣
the majority of the replies are saying get over it
the Dentist is a human, I hope you have never made a mistake before 🙂

I think you should report this as a Near Miss, so that the practice can review their procedures.

You could always ask your dentist about it, and ask what action has been taken to prevent it happening again.

Mistake reporting and reviewing should be transparent and honest. The point of reporting isn't to get someone into trouble, it's to try to prevent the mistake happening again.

Exactly.

They must check again and again.

I'm not sure what else you want from this?

For the dental practice to review what nearly happened (but for OP’s intervention) in order to set a protocol for avoiding this sort of mistake in the future.

In a good hospital procedure on the body for example, they keep checking facts and make a mark with felt tip well in advance on the operation site while checking again with the patient.

That's pretty bad. What if you didn't say anythjng !

YABU. It's not going to do you any good making more of it unless you want to find another dentist

But you felt the injection going into the upper gum, so he didn’t ‘start to operate’ really, did he?
mistakes do happen, the dentist probably won’t make that one again.

Wrong site surgery or local anaesthetic injection represents unsafe practice or potentially a lack of checks beforehand regarding the site and the tooth to be extracted.

If this had occurred in a hospital it would result in a fairly significant investigation.

I think a concern definitely needs to be raised and the practice need to reflect on how they are identifying the site of surgery.