How do you know if the dentist that you are going to is competent?  What criteria do you use? As a dentist, I know how to tell if a fellow dentist is good, bad, or ugly, but how do you tell? 

As I was saying in a comment to my last post, most people today have a lot of knowledge of medicine from shows like ER, CSI, and House MD and from networks like Discovery and The Learning Channel.  We are constantly hearing new things about medicine because they are in our newspapers and magazines.  I bet if I asked you to define terms like cardiac defibrillation, sputum, pulmonary embolism, and neurovascular accident, you may not know all of the technical specifics, but you’d give a working definition.  But what about the dental term TMJ?  Most people think that TMJ is a problem with their jaw joints, but did you know that TMJ stands for TemporoMandibular Joint and refers to the joint itself, and that to say “I have TMJ” is akin to saying ”I have arm” or “I have stomach”?  Can you start to see the imbalance between medical knowledge and dental knowledge among the general public?

So, my questions stand.  How do you choose a dentist and what criteria do you use to trust him with your mouth?  Please leave specific comments and most importantly, encourage your friends and relatives to visit the site and do the same!

UPDATE:  I realize that insurance is an issue when finding a dentist.  What I am interested in is what keeps you at the dentist, not necessarily what brought you to him (though feel free to mention both reasons).