Treating anxious patients is nothing new to dentists.  However, I have always been astonished by how much a patient’s anxiety affected me while treating them.  Despite my best efforts, it is difficult to separate my anxiety from their’s when a patient is rude, short, squirming, or crying while under going treatment.  I believe that part of our humanity is in our ability to be empathetic. Because of this I would imagine (and hope) that many clinicians feel their own anxiety as we treat scared and fearful patients.  As dentists we need to have a strong understanding of what anxiety is, how a patient’s anxiety can affect us and the efficacy of our treatment, how it can affect our practice economically, and how it can impact our own stress level.