Inside knowledge

Ben Atkins is a former practice owner and principal dentist – and is also a former past president of the Oral Health Foundation. He had been working as a qualified dentist for six months before he decided to purchase his own practice, when the opportunity, or “blind luck,” has he puts it, presented itself. On purchasing a practice so early in his career, he explains, “I like to push boundaries. The only way that I could see myself enjoying dentistry was purchasing and controlling that journey.”

Whilst he admits that it was a bigger job than he thought it was going to be, he believes that his motivation to succeed helped carry him through. He also adds that, “The people who I respected most in dentistry were the doers, not to talkers-about. I was lucky because I was on the Young Dentists Committee with the British Dental Association, so I knew a lot of the great and good in dentistry very early on in my career.”