Choosing the best dental videos to have playing in your waiting room depends on what you’re looking for. Are you looking for educational videos? Dental-specific content? Or just something visitors will enjoy watching?

Whichever it is, the following 3 tips for picking out the best TV programming for your patients should help you in your decision-making process. If you’re hot-to-trot, and you’d like to jump right into exploring your options, start your search with It’s Relevant TV.

Tip #1: Remember Who the TV is For

The TV in your waiting room isn’t for you, or your staff – it’s for your visitors. You, as a dentist, might find dental-related content interesting; the same, however, cannot always be said for your patients. Wait-time in a dentist’s office doesn’t tend to be very long– It’s actually amongst the shortest wait-periods in the healthcare industry. Even with a short wait, a 2-minute video of rotting teeth, bleeding gums, or a plaque-ridden mouth can make patients anxious, or paranoid about the state of their own teeth.

Even if the videos are meant to be educational, your viewers might not see it that way. But does that mean dental videos for patients are a bad idea? Not necessarily. The key to a successful waiting room TV for dentists is having a mix of dental-related content and traditional programming.

Tip #2: Avoid Looping Content!

The length of time that your patients are waiting may be short, but they’re not always by themselves. Parents of multiple kids might have 2-3 back-to-back appointments during the same visit to sit through. The last thing you want on the TV are the same 10 videos playing over-and-over. That can leave a bad impression on your messages, and your practice as a whole.

The best dental videos for your patients aren’t looping playlists, or medical displays anyway. Variety of content, and a large library of videos, are the two pillars of an effective dental TV solution.

Tip #3: Have Control Over Your TV

“Control. You must have control.” -Master Yoda

Having control over what’s playing is paramount to the success of your waiting room TV. The freedom to edit, upload, or remove videos and messaging from your TV is the level of customization you should expect from your waiting room TV software. But why is this feature important? Because not every custom TV network out there allows you to manage your TV’s content on your own or in a timely manner.

Some services leave you stuck with a short list of paid, preselected videos. Others, are chalk-full of ads that you can do nothing about, or contain messaging that you don’t want visitors to associate with your practice. And some make you wait weeks to implement any changes you need done.