Alun K Rees BDS shares his wild ride in the world of dentistry. From overcoming childhood dental trauma to building his own successful practice, Alun’s story is both inspiring and relatable.

*‘Truckin’ – The Grateful Dead.

That lyric has been one of my earworms since my university halls of residence days. The news is that the halls have recently been demolished, but the memories and perspective have not.

I was inspired to study dentistry as a result of childhood experiences. Born in the year that post-war sugar rationing was repealed, my parents spoiled their little boy. No surprise that my initial experience of dentistry was bad, aged six, held down in a dental chair, a black rubber gas mask forced over my nose and mouth for a ‘sniff and snatch’ then waking up minus half a dozen deciduous teeth. Traumatised doesn’t do it justice. 

That same upstairs front room in a terraced house in Cardiff was where my mother had a dental clearance, aged 33, under general anaesthetic. She was a couple of months pregnant with my brother; but had irregular periods and nobody asked if she might be ‘expecting’. As was the custom she was then left for three months for her “gums to harden” before she was able to have full dentures. 

The consequence of my trauma was a dental phobic, the child of two equal phobics, avoiding anything to do with dentistry if they could. Until one life-changing day, when I was taken to see another dentist in the suburb where we lived. Denise O’Leary was a Cork graduate who gave me the things that mattered most, time and attention. I felt special. In return she received that most important of the things, trust. She listened to me, explained things to me, was sympathetic, empathetic and won over this frightened little boy, who by now was all of 10 years old. 

Under her influence, from the age of 13, whenever people asked what I would do when I grew up, I knew I wanted to be my version of  Denise O’Leary. University, when I finally got there, was great. But somehow my “wanting to save teeth and care for people” philosophy seemed at variance with a course that focused on extractions, dentures and repair work. Where were the great steps forward in prevention? A quarter of a century of the NHS didn’t seem to have made a huge difference. My training there was to produce a competent (within reason) and safe (hopefully) new dentist to join the rest of the nash-bashing comrades in the trenches of caries and perio. Ah, perio! That was something of a Cinderella speciality, as was child dental health. 

Later, I realised that in similar way to generals always fighting the last war, it is impossible to accurately teach techniques and philosophies for treating future needs and wants. And it was while searching for wants that I fell out of love with my profession. The summary of every ‘check-up’, a phrase I grew to hate, started with ‘you need’ in order to bring you back to that hard, or impossible, to define state, of ‘dental fitness’. Searching to postpone life in a room for a while, I did three years of hospital oral surgery and then went into practice in what was once appropriately called an ‘amalgam factory’. Five minutes for a check-up. Ten minutes for a new patient examination. Quadrant dentistry, I was given very few words of advice. Some I remember were: “If you have to give a block make sure you have more than one filling to do”, “Get your backside in the air and fill your boots” and: “Bang in a local, sit ‘em back in the waiting room and keep drilling and filling”. 

I managed to last two years. I discovered later I was the longest-lasting associate to date. Of course, the problem was the associates. It couldn’t have been anything to do with the principals, could it? I saved some cash, sold my sports car, and travelled abroad – but came back to the same old, same old, under a different roof, looking out of a different window, when I could; an associate ‘bashing the nash’. I hated it and decided to find another way of making a living. Before I walked away I went on one ‘final’ course and met Roy Higson, of Stockport Dental Seminars. He introduced me to occlusion, treating people as individuals, not just mouths on legs, and to perio and prevention. I read about the Pankey Institute and my horizons broadened. It became clear that I would have to work in my own place if I was to persist and survive.

So, 10 years after graduation, the great adventure commenced; find a site, build a business, discover the mysteries of marketing and money, of people and systems, of having a vision and realising it. Being able to evolve my own philosophy and share it. To follow my nose into fields allied to dentistry and eventually to reduce my commitment to the NHS with hardly a misstep and watch the practice continue to thrive. To become a respected and valued member of a community and to raise a family.

Then, one day nearly 20 years into ownership, the magic ceased. I had taken things as far as I could from my experiences and those of my parents’ generation. Teeth didn’t have to come out at night, dental disease was controllable and preventable, people could have healthy and straight teeth for life. And that was it, I was done. I had never truly enjoyed the ‘watchmaker’ element of dentistry. My hands were good enough, but I got little satisfaction from being a technical dentist. Susan, wife, hygienist, partner in all things and I decided to sell up. The practice took three days to find a buyer (at 50% over valuation) and nearly a year to complete the sale. I moved into coaching, consulting and speaking and carried on trying to apply my, fairly simple, philosophy of life with another generation or more of dentists and their teams who face, or often won’t face, similar, but never identical challenges. Recently, I have focused more on individuals than businesses because that is where the doubts and insecurities are manifesting themselves, but that’s another story.

Author

Alun K Rees BDS is The Dental Business Coach. An experienced dental practice owner who changed career, he now works as a coach, consultant, trouble-shooter, analyst, speaker, writer and broadcaster. He brings the wisdom gained from his and others’ successes to help his clients achieve the rewards their work and dedication deserve. 

Tags: career, Dentistry