Atrium Health Dental Clinic, a facility of Carolinas Medical Center

Best dental care ever! Dr. Desai is amazing, patient, and confidence boosting. He explains what he's doing and takes my questions seriously. Older building, but the people are worth the drive.

I want to start by sharing that I’ve been building trust with this location since April of 2023. I grew up terrified of dentists. This fear only got worse with my tongue cancer diagnosis and the realization of my new and very necessary relationship with dentists. My cancer team set me up with this dental practice and it changed my views on dentists forever. I received gentle cleanings, no judgement about how limited my mouth opening is after cancer treatment, warm blankets when I need them, friendly attitudes, patience and understanding, ability to recognize physical cues to know a patient’s attitude (for those times when the patients can’t speak very well or at all), and catering to every need. And as a young person going through stage 4 cancer, cancer treatment, and then survivorship - the grace and patience from the team at CMC Atrium Dental meant everything to me. Today is the first day I can no longer give this practice 5 stars. I would never send a cancer patient here again. I wouldn’t send anyone healthy either. The complete lack of empathy was appalling. If your people are so burnt out that they can’t do their jobs with kindness, then they need to get new professions. Your patients don’t deserve to suffer at the hands of people who don’t care. Especially YOUR PATIENTS, who are some of the most critical, vulnerable, and facing some of the hardest times in their lives. How can you lack a basic level of empathy? A basic level of respect? You tried to get me to shut up and suffer so you could have a “quick 15 min procedure”. Well that "quick" procedure will probably be a topic in therapy for the next 5 years. I should probably go ahead and bill your office for those services. You forced my mouth open so we “wouldn’t have to start over”. Who cares if we start over when I’m sobbing and gasping for breath and shaking uncontrollably on the exam chair!! Why is your first thought to just yank my mouth open with your fingers and continue on with the job like a real human being isn’t attached to it. I would ask what they teach you in med school but since this a residency program, they are obviously teaching you this. I had even prearranged nitrous for this visit since my PTSD anxiety is so severe, but the resident decided this was “quick and easy and you won’t need that cause you don’t understand the procedure”. After the procedure was finished he just said “you’re done” and walked out of the room. I demanded to speak to a practice manager and I was met with a rude man who didn’t introduce himself, bother to ask what was going on, or even give basic apologies. He dismissed everything I said and wanted to talk about next time. That’s great but I didn’t ask for a practice manager to talk about next time. I wanted to talk about THIS visit. He dismissed me at every opportunity. I stared my dentist in the face and I said “I demand that you validate that you witnessed me have a panic attack on that exam chair and you did NOTHING. You’ve taken an oath to care and do no harm and you watched me SUFFER.” He stared at me with the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen. Like a sociopath who can’t understand empathy. He said nothing. I will also mention, I asked for the nitrous again during the produce. I started sobbing and said “I’m overwhelmed I need the nitrous” and he again ignored me because he wanted a “quick and easy procedure” and I was obviously in the way of that. Since the practice manager wasn’t responsive to my needs or complaints, I decided to leave rather than continue to talk to men who want to dismiss my trauma. I will never come back here. I hope Delaine (the rudest tech I’ve ever met) learns how to care for others or at least learns to pretend to. I hope Dr. Brennan learns some bedside manners. Maybe it would be great if he at least learned how to introduce himself to others when he walks in a room so they know who he is, if he even is the practice manager? And my resident, Dr. Finotello, I hope he doesn’t graduate his residency program because patients will face real harm and trauma under his hands, like I did.