Dentology Podcast with Luke Hutchings

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Luke Hutchings

Episode Release Date: Monday 5 August 2024

Andy & Chris (00:00.92)
Well, some might have actually caught up with us. It is. We are both sitting here in shorts. For those of you who can’t see our legs. It’s a lovely, beautiful day. I can see the birds flying. What a way to introduce our next guest. On a bright day, it doesn’t need brightening anymore. But is he a teeth whitening specialist? I think we have a dentist that’s going to brighten our mood. He is a very uplifting, very energetic and very likable Dr. Luke Hutchins, who’s

a dentist and also currently president of the BACD. He should have a chain around his neck. I don’t know if you get a chain around your neck. Like a mare, he gets two mares in a special car. Yeah, like, you know, someone in the background who’s going, don’t say that, don’t say that, that’s fine. Welcome Luke, how you doing?

Luke (00:45.823)
I’m really well guys. I’m just disappointed I didn’t wear my shorts. I’m stuck doing my clinical stuff. Well, it’s a constant piss take at work actually, because Chris, who I work with, Dr. Leach, is always taking the mickey out of me for being in shorts no matter what the weather. So…

Andy & Chris (00:49.136)
Yeah, see now we should have sent you the memo.

Andy & Chris (01:00.848)
Are you like the equivalent of a postman? Are you like the dental postman? So why no shorts today?

Luke (01:03.999)
I am the equivalent. I’m dental postman. I am dental postman, definitely. It’s my year -round attire. Because I have to be clinical. So when I’m clinical, I have to be in like proper stuff and look like a well -respected dental member of the community. Otherwise, no, I’m very much shorts and t -shirt kind of guy.

Andy & Chris (01:16.176)
yeah true true you can’t ever true yeah true forgot about that yeah can’t ever yeah

Excellent, excellent, aren’t we? To start off with Luke, I’m often surprised at how many dentists are inspired so young to join the profession. Yeah, we get people who, I think we had one person that kind of said there were three or four years old and they kind of uttered the word. Or as Millard said, when they spun the bottle or something and it pointed towards the syringe and he was in. That’s right. He was either going to be a drug dealer or a dentist. Yeah. And I think in your case, you were inspired by a neighbour.

Luke (01:33.791)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (01:54.064)
when you were quite young. How old were you and what was it about the neighbour that inspired you? Swimming pool, big car.

Luke (01:54.143)
I was, yeah.

Luke (01:59.167)
I was, well, this is the question Chris, whether or not you wanted the genuine answer or whether you wanted the politically correct answer. So I was six or seven years old actually, and we lived in a little tiny village in Herefordshire called Webley, which is this little tiny black and white village that nothing ever happens in. And my next door neighbor was actually the local dentist. So the dental practice was literally in a barn across the road from my house.

Andy & Chris (02:06.)
This is very very very real Luke, come on man.

Luke (02:28.095)
And James was just the nicest man. Sadly, he went on to have a stroke and suffered from a lot of stress and stuff that a lot of us people in dentistry do. So retired early, but Jonathan, his son still runs the practice there. So yeah, he was just a bit of an inspiration at that point. It helped obviously that my brother had also declared an interest in wanting to be a dentist. And I was an ultra competitive kid. So it was anything that anyone else can do.

Andy & Chris (02:38.512)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy & Chris (02:51.248)
Alright.

Luke (02:57.247)
I can definitely do better. And that definitely stems from my brother as well. If he wanted to be the football captain, I was going to be a better football captain. If he wanted to score X amount of points in rugby, I was going to score more points in rugby than him. So there was that competitive element. James did have a nice 911 turbo as well that was sat on his drive. So there was a bit of a motivating factor to that as well. Nice car, nice house, lovely guy. He seemed like he enjoyed life.

Andy & Chris (02:58.608)
Okay.

Andy & Chris (03:14.928)
Okay, that helps that helps

Luke (03:24.895)
And yeah, it seemed like a worthwhile profession. Everyone in the village liked him. He was well known. And just, yeah, genuinely from there, I thought that was something I could get into.

Andy & Chris (03:32.88)
Was there any history within your family on the on the medic side or health at all?

Luke (03:35.647)
No, not at all. Not at all. So my father was a timber merchant. So he imported hardwoods from South America and was in the second largest timber merchant company in the UK. My mum was a florist. So there was nothing at all that was anything medical anyway. She was the one. Yeah. So very much away from the medical side of things. No, he’s not. I beat him, Chris. I beat him.

Andy & Chris (03:45.168)
well.

Andy & Chris (03:50.096)
Wow.

Andy & Chris (03:55.152)
but lovely traditional professions aren’t they? Is your brother a dentist as well then? Did he? He didn’t? okay. really, really?

Luke (04:05.631)
I don’t know if I actually did, if you put it back to it. He is now a computer nerd. He won’t mind me saying that he does something in the dark arts of computing that I don’t quite understand. So he does hardware, software engineering, breaks through firewalls and all sorts of weird and wacky things that are beyond my scope of practice. He’s like the IT support basically whenever I have a problem, I ring the ringer and go Neil, can you log in?

Andy & Chris (04:10.416)
Ma -hahaha.

Andy & Chris (04:22.928)
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. What’s this mean? Brilliant. And we’ll come to your dental school experience before that. But before you got to that stage, there was quite a tough life lesson for you, wasn’t there? Because you ended up missing a year of school. You suffered with colitis quite badly. What was that? What was that period like?

Luke (04:44.511)
Yeah, yeah, so it was, you know that 16, 17 year old period in your life where you want to be out drinking, pulling birds and like doing all the other things that 16 or 17 year old lads want to do. I think that was the bit that I missed most rather than the education. I did miss a year of A -level and I’d take a year out.

Andy & Chris (04:55.536)
Yeah, it’s the greatest to grow. It’s a growing up years, isn’t it? Yeah Yeah

Andy & Chris (05:07.184)
hahahaha

Luke (05:11.647)
after that as well to have multiple surgeries and stuff like that. It was formative, I suppose, because at that point, I’d gone through all of the UCAS applications and got all the kind of stuff that I needed, but then obviously had to declare that, you know, I’d been unwell and blah, blah, blah, and potentially couldn’t take the place. And they all turned around and said to me, there’s no way you’ll cope with a dental course.

Andy & Chris (05:30.128)
Mm.

Luke (05:38.143)
So we’re gonna retract our offers basically as near as damn it. So I had to, as well as going through the medical stuff at that point, fight the toss that actually I would cope with that, get through dentistry and be okay basically. So it definitely gave me a bit more grit and determination and an early life lesson.

Andy & Chris (05:38.512)
Hi Emma.

Andy & Chris (05:42.8)
wow.

Andy & Chris (05:49.424)
Clear.

Andy & Chris (05:53.776)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (05:57.52)
But also emotionally as well because you’ve seen your neighbour, you decided as quite a young kid that this was going to be your path. So to have this happen and then the people who are going to give you that education say actually no we’re not going to allow you to come on the course.

Luke (06:11.839)
Yeah, it was one of those ones that it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth. But it depends, like a lot of things. There are a lot of people that have gone through similar illnesses and you’ve got two ways that you can come out the other side. You can either let it defeat you, which you know with a lot of people with illnesses, sadly, they do, or you can take it and say, well, actually, I’m going to beat that. I’m going to use that as fuel to move me forward and achieve something or what I want to do with life. So yeah.

Andy & Chris (06:15.28)
Yeah, I bet.

Andy & Chris (06:25.168)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (06:29.104)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (06:33.008)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (06:37.264)
Mm -hmm.

And I think very often I think it’s a thing to find you Yeah I think it’s the things that have happened in your life before you get ill but kind of when you get to that fork in the road determines which way you go because I think in that moment you feel unwell kind of you feel we battered and beaten and I think that kind of resilience and that kind of positive outlook on life is something that’s probably been fostered in you by your parents or in other ways so when that moment comes you’re able to cope with it as opposed to crumble and a 9 -eleven

Luke (06:49.503)
Yeah.

Luke (07:01.919)
Mm -hmm.

Luke (07:08.191)
Yeah, I never quite got around to buying one actually. No, I had a Boxster, I had an M3. I’m currently driving a sensible family car with the kids in town. tell me about it. But there we go. It is what it is. Yeah, that’s the one. Lots of seats for the footy on a Sunday. That’s the problem. There we go.

Andy & Chris (07:11.248)
I said, did you ever buy one? Did you ever buy one?

Andy & Chris (07:21.104)
dear. We’ve all had the sensible family car. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. People carriers. Yeah. Yeah. So then roll forward. You got yourself well. You did get your place. You went to Cardiff qualifying in 2002. What was your, what was your dental school experience like? You made up for 16 and 17.

Luke (07:38.783)
Yep, I did.

I did. Dental school back in the day. Well, yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I’m very glad social media wasn’t a thing. Because I look back on, well, I genuinely look back on half the things that we did at university and half of the social engagements and outings that we had in the evening and think if any of those had been recorded, I wonder whether or not half of us would have actually passed. So that is definitely a thing that I’m glad I didn’t have to negotiate that.

Andy & Chris (07:53.744)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Andy & Chris (08:06.64)
wow.

Luke (08:12.063)
In terms of the education, Cardiff and I think most of the dental schools at that point were very much breeding basic NHS dentists. It was very much to kind of fuel the need of service in the populace around us, which was at that point in time, probably 95 % to 99 % NHS predominant. So I obviously, like most people came out of the dental school thinking I was the big I am and the dog’s bollocks.

Andy & Chris (08:33.552)
Mm -hmm.

Luke (08:41.375)
because I think everyone comes out and thinks, I’m great. And then it’s only when you actually get to that first job and that first position you actually realize you don’t know anything. And that’s when you start to learn. Yeah, that’s when you realize my base knowledge of the stuff I probably don’t need to know actually is there, but now I need to actually learn how to be a dentist. So it equipped me with the basic skills and the basic knowledge, but I’d say it took me the next 15 to 20 years of…

Andy & Chris (08:49.328)
Yeah, that’s when you really find out.

Andy & Chris (08:59.344)
Mm. Yeah. Mm.

Andy & Chris (09:09.392)
Yeah.

Luke (09:09.791)
progression, career development to say, I’m okay at Dentistry.

Andy & Chris (09:12.688)
I think in many ways it’s a bit like getting a driving license. At 10 o ‘clock in the morning you’re a learner and you need somebody next to you. You have your driving test and by midday you’re unleashed on the world with a vehicle. And so whilst you have a license you don’t actually learn how to really drive and navigate the world and all the other…

bizarre things that happened on the road for a few years. Just rolling back to something you said about not having social media. Do you think it’s harder for young people today, and not necessarily just in a dental setting, because they’ve always got kind of 1 % of their mind is on how’s that going to look, how I behave, what should I post? And I guess it kind of feeds into how authentic people are, because they’re always thinking about how others are going to perceive them.

Luke (09:59.519)
I think a lot of evidence is actually out there on mental health issues and use of phones, use of social media, because it does always portray an idealized version of someone. So nobody ever posts their bad days on social media. You’ll never get, I had a shit day, this happened. I had to get the patient back in and take another scan. I had to do X, Y, and Z. It’s only ever, you’re golden, fantastic, this is my best work, this is my…

Andy & Chris (10:03.792)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (10:11.792)
Yeah.

No, that’s always great stuff, no.

Mm.

Yeah.

Andy & Chris (10:27.76)
Yeah.

Luke (10:28.703)
There is that perception and it is easy to get drawn into the trap of I’m not good enough because I’m not doing things as well as these other people. There’s also as well with social media a lot of people learning from Instagram and Facebook and stuff like that, which I don’t think is an appropriate thing either to be honest with you. And it’s kind of like, where did you learn to do that? Well, I saw somebody do that on a post on Instagram, so I thought I’d give it a go.

Andy & Chris (10:34.992)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (10:48.08)
It’s not a great place to learn anything.

Andy & Chris (10:55.984)
Hmm.

Luke (10:56.159)
And you sit there and think, well, there’s no evidence base. There’s no long -term study and backup to it. But you saw it on Instagram. Do you think that’s wise? It’s a really hard thing to come to terms with, I think. I think it’s not doing the profession any great benefits. It’s great from a networking standpoint. And from that perspective, fantastic. But from actually looking at clinical base and stuff like that, I think you have to take a lot of it with a pinch of salt, is what I would say.

Andy & Chris (10:59.264)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (11:04.56)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (11:19.312)
Mmm.

Definitely, yeah.

Luke (11:23.199)
In terms of my kids and in terms of like the youth of today coming forward, I’m very kind of protective of them being on social media and trying to negate how much time they spend on it. Because you look at eating disorders and you look at problems like that and you know, you look at people, exactly, anxiety’s through the roof and you look at the children. So if we look at my 11 year old daughter’s class, for example, there’s, I think six or seven kids in that class that have been diagnosed anxious on Sten’s register.

Andy & Chris (11:32.432)
Definitely.

Andy & Chris (11:36.208)
Yeah. Anxiety and stress.

Luke (11:52.543)
need extra help. And a lot of it’s actually stemmed post COVID and post kind of lockdown and stuff like that. I think there’s still going to be a generation of people that we don’t really understand what the last few years have been like and how that’s going to affect their teenage and adult life. So it will be interesting. I think, you know, you look at the young dentists these days and you look at their education and how that’s been lacking for them in the last few years and how much they’ve missed in those formative years of, yeah, and their driving license, Andy.

Andy & Chris (11:53.776)
Wow.

Andy & Chris (11:58.288)
11 years old.

Andy & Chris (12:05.2)
Mm. Yeah. Mm.

Andy & Chris (12:15.312)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:19.032)
Yeah, yeah.

Luke (12:21.183)
there’ll be sections of their driving license where they’ve completely missed out. That’s what the left indicator does. So it’s going to be, yeah, it’s disheartening. And talking to some of the younger dentists and the students now, because I obviously get quite a lot of interaction, you know, a couple of them now, a couple of the students don’t feel they’re very well supported. They don’t feel like they’re getting the education they deserve. But that’s, you know, they’re being let down by the system, shall we say. Go on, Andy, sorry.

Andy & Chris (12:24.144)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. It’s frightening really, isn’t it? Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:34.864)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:46.128)
So you qualified back in 2002 and then for five years did a significant amount of work on the NHS.

Luke (12:52.351)
With me?

Luke (12:56.575)
Yep, that was correct.

Andy & Chris (12:57.04)
So for five years you were working. How did you find that as a period? And it’s kind of a twofold question. What did it enable you to do in terms of developing your clinical skills and your communication skills? But there’s also a trend among younger dentists to kind of qualify and quickly get out of the NHS to move private. I’d be interested to know what you learned and what that five year period post -qualification gave you in terms of setting you up for your future.

Luke (13:27.359)
So it’s very much a double -edged sword in many ways. You’ve got to remember as well, back then, the UDA system wasn’t a thing. So it was a very different NHS system that we’re working in then to what we’re working in now. Correct, yeah. So you came in, you had an amalgam, I think it was like £11 for an amalgam filling, and then everyone tried to stick seven pins in there, because you got paid £1 .80 for a pin, so you could double your amalgam filling fee to…

Andy & Chris (13:29.744)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (13:34.032)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Yeah, so it’s affected the items of service. So you delivered dentistry, you got paid for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke (13:54.399)
Those were the games, obviously. That wasn’t me. I was a good person. It allowed you to make mistakes and it allowed you to build up some clinical skills and allow you to develop a rapport with patients and actually work in an environment where the expectation of perfect dentistry wasn’t there, I suppose. Would I do that now? And is that available in the NHS system at the moment? I don’t think it is. I think that’s the problem. I don’t think…

Andy & Chris (13:56.944)
No, that’s right. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (14:01.712)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (14:13.488)
Mm.

Luke (14:24.287)
Once you get past that DFT placement and that training place, the support possibly isn’t there. And a lot of the time you might just become a machine that’s pumping out numbers. Cause a lot of the places nowadays it’s corporate based and it’s, you know, looking at finance and figures. For me, it was definitely a benefit because it meant I could see a lot of patients. I could make mistakes, fix those mistakes. And there wasn’t a great deal of kind of, I don’t want to say come back.

Andy & Chris (14:33.744)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy & Chris (14:43.376)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.

Luke (14:51.327)
but it wasn’t like, my God, you’ve made a mistake, let’s report you to the GDC. It was very much, you know, we are practicing dentists, we are learning dentistry as we practice. So yeah, it’s a different time in dentistry then. Do I think everyone should come out and become a private dentist right now? It’s a hard one that, because I actually think potentially NHS dentistry over the next few years might not be the same format that we’ve seen.

Andy & Chris (14:54.96)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (14:58.864)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (15:20.464)
Yep.

Luke (15:20.799)
I think we’re going to have to move more to an emergent core system. And I think there will have to be probably in place more private training systems potentially to actually transition those younger dentists into private roles where they can have some mentorship. So I know there’s lots of people that are actually doing that now, picking up people early in their career that show promise and helping them bring them on. So in the practice, we’ve had a few younger dentists that have been a year qualified, two years qualified, and myself and a lot of the other clinicians in the practice have just sat down with them.

Andy & Chris (15:35.216)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:41.872)
Mm.

Luke (15:50.943)
two, three, four times a week and just try to impart knowledge of our 20 odd years of mistakes basically.

Andy & Chris (15:56.684)
Hmm. I mean that mentorship is really, really valuable. How was the transition for you? Because five years…

pretty much exclusively on the NHS. That’s a lot of work, a lot of teeth, a lot of treatments, but also a lot of built up repetitive behaviour in terms of how you behaved as a clinician. So then in 2011, you moved to Hampshire and you move into a private practice. So how did you personally find that transition from doing kind of high volume NHS repetitive work to then sliding into a private situation?

Luke (16:14.335)
Is it?

Luke (16:32.639)
I found it fantastic. It was wonderful. I was never the quickest NHS worker. I never gained the NHS. I never made oodles of money on the NHS. I was probably a shit NHS associate and employee. Correct. Yeah. So even when I was doing the NHS dentistry, I probably wanted to do NHS dentistry as well as I could do NHS dentistry.

Andy & Chris (16:34.448)
Hahaha!

Andy & Chris (16:50.512)
Yeah, you’re the best private NHS dentist out there.

Andy & Chris (16:59.152)
Mmm. Yep.

Luke (17:00.063)
And that transition has just transitioned into doing private dentistry well. It was a fairly smooth transition, honestly. I think I’ve always had a fairly personable personality type with people. I’ve always been able to communicate fairly well with patients. So that’s not been a significant issue. And that’s 90 % of the battle actually. If you communicate well, able to talk to a person and kind of get across your message.

Andy & Chris (17:03.632)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (17:13.712)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (17:23.44)
Yeah, definitely.

Luke (17:28.863)
they become your raving fans basically at the end of the day. So as long as you can do that.

Andy & Chris (17:31.12)
Yeah. Is that a skill you’ve learned or have you always been quite, had good interpersonal skills and been interested in people?

Luke (17:38.495)
I don’t know the answer to that. You have to ask my wife that one, Andy, or she’ll tell me that actually I am awkward, borderline autistic, and just not able to communicate. But I think it comes down to, yeah, it does. Every Sunday in the pub when we go and meet our friends, it’s definitely something I’ve developed more, I think. It’s definitely something where I’ve been put in what would have been uncomfortable situations for me.

Andy & Chris (17:51.472)
That sounds like words being repeated, then.

Andy & Chris (18:06.352)
Hmm.

Luke (18:07.551)
so it is, you know, with development through various other things, like teaching and getting onto stage, talking about stuff. And that’s definitely, I think. No, I probably should, to be honest with you. Most people sit there.

Andy & Chris (18:13.024)
Didn’t do any formal training or anything.

You didn’t go on any sort of sales courses or communication courses. But also, but I think with communication, for me, one of the key characteristics of good communicators are being authentic. And you know, you describe yourself as being slightly autistic, you know, borderline autistic, slightly awkward. But if that’s as you are, if that is just part of how you are and how you communicate, I think that there’s something quite warm about people who aren’t too well polished and trained. Well, you’re Elon Musk, aren’t you? You know, Elon is a bit odd. That authenticity in communication,

Luke (18:35.167)
and then.

Luke (18:49.759)
I wish I had this money.

Andy & Chris (18:50.386)
Education. well, yeah, it’s true. It’s true comes through quite strongly. So I say it’s just interesting to know how you view it from your side

Luke (18:58.015)
I think definitely if you’re just honest and authentic with people. It’s when you start to kind of maybe polish and blur the lines of truth slightly, people will pick up on that. Definitely. Yeah, that’s definitely a mistake. You just want to be yourself. And that comes across to everyone that you’re talking to, I think.

Andy & Chris (19:01.072)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (19:09.136)
Yeah, yeah. You can pretend to be something you’re not. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (19:19.856)
And then some people will like you and some people won’t you know and those ones that don’t won’t come again. Yeah

Luke (19:27.423)
That’s a really important lesson to learn as well though, because to be honest with you, you don’t have to treat everyone. And that is something that a lot of younger dentists get fallen into that trap of well, because they want to be doing dentistry. So they think they have to take on every single case, where actually you will save a lot of headaches when you are early on, the people you do want to treat and the people you don’t want to treat. So yeah, that’s definitely an interesting point as well, Chris.

Andy & Chris (19:30.544)
Yeah.

No. Yes. No.

Andy & Chris (19:38.352)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (19:42.608)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (19:46.8)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s where the communication is, isn’t it? And that relationship thing, because we all make snap. What is it? How long do you get in five seconds or something to make a good first impression? But we do on everything we do. You meet someone, you make a judgment and it works the same with patients and dentists. And that first impression sticks with you. Yeah, it’s really hard to move it on. And then back in 2011, 2012, you did Chris Orr’s course. And isn’t it amazing that you can just say Chris Orr’s course and people

Luke (20:16.959)
Mm -hmm.

I did, yeah.

Andy & Chris (20:23.522)
or go, yep, yep, I know what that is without having to quantify it in any way. And you say that since you did that course, you haven’t looked back since. What was it about that course that enables you to say that? What was the turning point?

Luke (20:31.103)
No.

Luke (20:36.127)
So prior to Chris’s course, I had a toolbox with lots of pieces of puzzles in there. And Chris basically allowed you to put the piece of the puzzles together, if that made sense. So it completed the picture effectively. So it enabled me and probably every other person that sat on the course to look at dentistry in a more comprehensive way and actually to do a comprehensive overview of everything.

Andy & Chris (20:42.384)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (20:47.184)
That’s nice description.

Andy & Chris (21:05.136)
Right.

Luke (21:05.567)
That’s the differential again, a lot of the time between private dentistry and NHS dentistry. NHS dentistry is very single mouth, single tooth rather, single unit firefighting. Private dentistry, in my humble opinion, a lot of the time can be that, but it shouldn’t be. It should be a comprehensive view of that person’s oral health, mouth health, function. You know, have they got wear, which is going to be probably the biggest litigious thing that comes up over the next thing. Are we treating the wear? Are we monitoring the wear?

Andy & Chris (21:09.936)
Mm.

Mm. Yep.

Andy & Chris (21:20.656)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (21:26.416)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (21:33.904)
Hmm.

Luke (21:34.079)
Why are we monitoring where? Because it’s only going to get worse. But that’s another story entirely. But Chris kind of opened my eyes to how we can treat patients as a comprehensive treatment plan, rather than just piecemeal trying to fix the single parts, if that makes sense. I think you should probably also say Chris and Zainab’s course. Because Zainab will be in the background as well, if she doesn’t hear her name going. But no one ever mentions me. It’s always the Chris Or course. And she’s obviously the kind of a…

Andy & Chris (21:45.36)
Mm.

Yeah, definitely.

Andy & Chris (21:52.112)
Right, yes.

Andy & Chris (21:57.552)
Good point. Yeah, very good point.

Luke (22:01.151)
admin behind the scenes that makes sure that Chris gets to where he needs to get to in a day, I think. Tells him which tie to wear which day.

Andy & Chris (22:04.272)
Yeah, yeah

And then it then I guess it put you on a different trajectory because back in 2021 you won the Assessic Dentist of the Year Award and You you might have also won the patient care Southeast at the private dentistry awards in 2020 How did you know that Andy? I guess for people watching on people watching on YouTube might have worked out how I was able to answer that. Yeah, because I’m impressed with your memory And if you listen on to a podcast jump on YouTube and you’ll find out you want to listen around about the 22 minute mark

Luke (22:16.735)
I did, yeah.

Luke (22:23.391)
Did you say that?

Luke (22:36.479)
I’ll have to put my glasses back on to see it. That’s the only problem in the background there. So yeah, that was probably the culmination. So if we skip from 2011 to that point, effectively, I joined the BACD at the end of Chris’s course. We can talk about that in a bit, I guess. That opens up meeting a whole realm of people that I didn’t knew existed before. And in that 10 year period,

Andy & Chris (22:38.288)
hahahaha

Andy & Chris (22:54.224)
Right.

Andy & Chris (22:57.776)
Yeah.

Luke (23:06.687)
I’ve probably made some of my best friends in dentistry. I’ve made lifelong mates. I’ve met my family. I’ve met my kind of tribe, as we often put it, like -minded people that kind of click along and bounce off each other. The awards, they get a bad rap awards, don’t they? Technically, the aesthetic dentistry awards are one I like because actually they were based on an objective measure. They were based on clinical work. So they were the ones, as a lifelong associate,

Andy & Chris (23:09.456)
Brilliant.

Andy & Chris (23:14.448)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (23:19.6)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (23:28.72)
Hmm.

Luke (23:36.575)
they were the ones that kind of meant something to me, if that made sense, because it was based on my clinical work. It was my cases, it was my composite work, it was my ceramic work. So that was probably to me more important than the patient care one. And we’ve won the private dentistry best practice. I think we’ve done, I think it’s 19 awards over the last five years now. So we’re doing okay as a practice. I think I’m on seven of those through various clinically based award things.

Andy & Chris (23:38.672)
Mm -hmm. Right here.

Andy & Chris (23:57.264)
Wow impressive. Yep.

Well, video.

Luke (24:05.279)
It’s a nice pattern on the back. It’s not well, yeah, it’s good for marketing. It’s not.

Andy & Chris (24:06.832)
I said it’s not bad for marketing. I think a lot of it is where you position it. I think from the team point of view, I think it’s really special. I think teams really love it. It’s kind of like the dental Oscars when you get to go to the event. That’s nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke (24:16.767)
Mm.

It really is. This is the thing with these awards. They’re a great day out. There’s a really great positive buzz. And the teams do come back from them buzzing excited to get back to work. And they do.

Andy & Chris (24:27.76)
Yeah. Yeah. And also I think from a patient, from a patient point of view, people like to be associated with businesses that are doing well and having success. So if you can wave a water around, I think there’s a positive that goes with that. They’ve got very limited other criteria to compare you have that. Yes. Therefore something like that is like, okay. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. You sort of glossed over the BACD thing and you’ve been involved there for many years.

Luke (24:48.895)
It definitely gets commented on quite a lot by patients, new patients when they come into the practice they do.

Luke (24:56.607)
I was going to say come back to the BACD thing. We’re leaking on gloss over that.

Andy & Chris (24:57.648)
Yeah, I mean, you know, you got involved in the sort of the committee level back in 2012. And in those early days, as a clinician, but as part of the wider dental community, what did the BACD offer you that kind of wasn’t out there anywhere else?

Luke (25:04.287)
Yep.

Luke (25:13.471)
So the initial formation of the BACD was very much at that point in time. So the BACD is actually 20 years this year. So it had been going for a little bit more time than I got engaged with. At that point in time, finding cosmetic dentistry and finding world -class peers to teach you that, you had to fly to the US. You had to fly to Europe. You had to go four or five hours away to find those people to teach you.

Andy & Chris (25:19.312)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (25:33.456)
Yeah.

Luke (25:40.383)
And what the BACD did was brought world -class clinicians in to a central hub to teach you those skills effectively. That was in terms of the educational offering. The kind of immeasurable things around that were finding the place that you belong. It was finding that, I know full well if I ever have a problem, if I have an issue or I have something that I’m not sure of, I can pick up the phone and I know 20 or 30 people that will know the answer.

Andy & Chris (25:57.744)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (26:04.56)
Mm.

someone who can help.

Luke (26:09.471)
20 or 30 people that will sit there and say, stop being an idiot, Luke. It’s absolutely fine. Get back to do X, Y, and Z. It’ll be good. And that’s whether it’s a life something, that’s whether it’s a dental something, that’s whether it’s me being an idiot. I’ve always got someone that’ll have my back. And that’s very much the thing. It’s the networking for me every day, Luke.

Andy & Chris (26:16.88)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (26:24.272)
Mm.

That’s great to have that support network, isn’t it? That’s brilliant to have that. Yeah, I think I think I think everybody needs one. Yeah, and I think dentistry as a profession can be quite lonely at principle level, but also at associate level. I don’t think that people talk enough. We were talking in an earlier episode about how people don’t share their failures. They don’t talk about problems and things that aren’t going well. So to hear that the BACG provides that as a community through the relationships you’ve got is

And obviously your involvement in the BACD was ongoing and continuous to the point where you’re President this year, which is fabulous. It’s fabulous news. And what have been your priorities during your presidency?

Luke (27:03.679)
I am Deja. It’s…

Luke (27:09.823)
This is a really interesting question because everyone asked you that and it is very much like a longitudinal institution that you already have things set up for multiple years in advance of where you’re going to be. So I’m actually sat there now looking at conferences in 26 and 27 rather than 24 and 25. It’s very much, we sat down probably about four or five years ago when Chris McConnell was president.

Andy & Chris (27:17.2)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (27:28.16)
Yeah. So you’re almost inheriting some of the things that have been done before. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (27:38.384)
that, yep.

Luke (27:38.879)
and we very much try to plot a path to where we want the ship to sail over the next few years. And it is very much trying to continue our inclusivity. It’s very much trying to entice new young dentists, keep our older populace. It’s a hard thing to do. Keeping everyone happy is not simple in many things in life. It’s about trying to offer as much benefit to our membership as we can do.

Andy & Chris (27:44.432)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (27:57.296)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (28:00.784)
No.

Luke (28:07.199)
still offering world -class clinicians coming across and educating at significantly reduced fees to what they’d be paying to go and see them. Obviously, we’ve got a whole plethora of other member benefits as well. There’s 14 or 15 things in terms of reduction in social media, postings and marketing companies, materials, X, Y and Z. So there’s lots of other kind of tangible benefits. And again, it is the intangible benefits that

Andy & Chris (28:14.704)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (28:28.496)
Hmm.

Luke (28:37.151)
I think you can’t really put a price on. Yeah, it’s correct. You get what you put into it, definitely. So for my presidency, it’s very much steering the ship. It’s very much negotiating, which are still challenging times actually in a conference organizers life, because costs are still astronomical. And in terms of…

Andy & Chris (28:39.792)
that community and a lot of that is like lots of groups isn’t it if you invest in it invest in you. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (28:52.012)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (28:55.952)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, they are ridiculous. And it’s not an insignificant event, you know, the conference and the congress. Yeah.

Luke (29:07.935)
Well, it’s a three day conference at fairly prestigious venues across London this year. Then we’re in Manchester next year. So back to London the year after. There are fairly substantial figures in cost that we’re talking about. But we’re very lucky. We’ve got good support from trade. And we get good trade sponsorship every time we hold an event. We’ve got a very loyal core membership base that return year in, year out.

Andy & Chris (29:16.112)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (29:22.48)
Definitely. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (29:27.6)
Yeah.

Luke (29:37.567)
And I think we definitely have a lot to offer still in terms of educating people and being the go -to place for cosmetic dentists in the UK really and truly.

Andy & Chris (29:45.2)
Hmm.

Absolutely, absolutely. Just picking up on the cosmetic dentistry bit and linking that with your role in the BACD, your awards, but also go back to the social media bit. Has the term cosmetic dentistry, has that commoditized, devalued dentistry in any way? Corrupted. Where, you know, people use this word cosmetic and it’s banded around and it sort of sounds like, you know, composite or veneers or whitening. But does that kind of not necessarily tell the full story in terms of what you have to do as a clinician?

before you get to the cosmetic bit. The public kind of getting a skewed view of where dentistry is at.

Luke (30:22.879)
it’s an interesting question that one. I think it depends on the ethic of the clinician that’s treating a lot of the time to be 100 % honest with you. most patients that come in to see me and I can only really draw my own face, if that makes sense, always come with dental baggage. The vast majority of them are, I’ve been at a practice for 10, 15, 20 years. I’m aware my teeth are now starting to look a little bit worse. what can you do about it Luke?

Andy & Chris (30:27.888)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (30:35.12)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (30:51.6)
Mm.

Luke (30:51.935)
And then there’s that conversation about, I know that you’ve seen this beautiful case where they just had six veneers and they went away happy and all things are great. But what you didn’t see was the fact that all of their posterior teeth were worn. They’ve lost their occlusal vertical dimension. They’re smashing everything to pieces unless all of that is fixed. So there is definitely a big need for stabilization phase in a lot of our treatment plans. So there’s definitely a lot of functional bias that comes into a lot of things.

The difficulty is there are certain clinicians potentially that will still just do the cosmetic dentistry. So they will still just do the bonding, the veneers. They’ll say, you know, your case isn’t ideal for this. Our work will probably last three to five years. And then potentially after that, we might need to look at it again, which for me doesn’t sit well in my wheelhouse. I’d rather be able to say to someone, you know, I fixed your teeth.

Andy & Chris (31:29.712)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (31:40.24)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (31:46.672)
Yeah.

Luke (31:51.775)
and let’s make them look good. I think all dentistry should have a kind of lens of we can make things look cosmetic. There’s nobody wants their teeth to be fixed that look shit, realistically.

Andy & Chris (31:53.456)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (31:58.288)
Hmm.

Yeah.

And I think I think there’s also the issue as well that there’s an education piece because Having to educate and communicate so the patient understands the value of the non of the non sexy dentistry So that the sexy bit looks good for longer and I think that’s where the challenges people go Yeah, but I kind of I want to look like I’ve only got so much money to spend I don’t want to look good. It’s like well for your long -term health actually that money spent on getting yourself stable and already fit would make more sense and I think

Luke (32:12.543)
absolutely.

Absolutely.

Andy & Chris (32:32.338)
as a big communication job within dentistry to explain the value of the stuff that kind of sits behind the scenes, you know, that supporting work and the foundational work.

Luke (32:43.743)
It surprises me how switched on patients are to that though. If you sit down and actually have a conversation and you actually explain it to them and go through the process and explain why something will happen, then I would say 90 % of the time you convert that patient to a patient that wants to engage in that process, in all honesty. Absolutely, yeah.

Andy & Chris (32:46.992)
Really?

So if you explain it well, if you explain it well. Yeah.

Mm.

Andy & Chris (33:03.376)
Which for you is really rewarding. The fact that there are people that go, yeah, I get it. Yeah, that makes complete sense. But I think that is an art of education and communication. And honestly. Because actually you go down the process of explaining as opposed to just saying, yeah, I can do that.

Luke (33:22.335)
No, definitely, definitely. Problem is they can go down the road and they’ll see someone that will go, I can do that. So there are, you know, realistically what happens then is in three to five years time when what they’ve done has failed is you see them back on your doorstep and then they go, I’ve had this done. I know you said it wouldn’t work. And here we are again in a situation where, look, you know, you said it would break. It’s broken. And then you’re like, well.

Andy & Chris (33:24.016)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. That is.

Andy & Chris (33:36.4)
Mmm, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And it has. Yeah.

Luke (33:49.855)
sat there going, I told you so. You don’t say it. You just sit there and go, I know we’ve had that conversation. Unfortunately, now it’s a little bit more difficult to put you right, because you come with more. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (33:51.6)
Yeah. No, it’s in there.

Andy & Chris (33:59.216)
And it’s more expensive, isn’t it? It’s a bit like the builder who goes bust on your work site and then someone else comes in and goes, ooh. Yeah, that’s right.

Luke (34:06.047)
They’ve come with more dental baggage effectively. So there’s more to unpack, more to unpick to get it right.

Andy & Chris (34:11.216)
So Luke, if we roll forward a few years and your two kids come to you and they say, dad, should we do dentistry? What would you say?

Luke (34:19.999)
I’ve got no problems with that one in answering it because I have no doubt either than want to be dentists. That’s never going to happen.

Andy & Chris (34:26.769)
That’s because you haven’t got a 911. That’s what it is. Well already, even at their ages now, they’ve already kind of put themselves out of that camp. Right. okay.

Luke (34:35.071)
Yeah, no, absolutely. So we’re 11 and 8 at home. The 11 year old is super, super musical and she wants to go to something musical. Either that or a marine biologist apparently. A really… who plays rock concerts in the evening.

Andy & Chris (34:45.168)
Famous.

Okay, that’s round to be a marine biologist tell us she needs to get None of when she does a GCSE you should need to tell us she has to get seven C’s to be a marine biologist bomb bomb That’s cuz we had a Blake who was a marine bar doesn’t She needs to have the singing I to communicate with the whales, yeah

Luke (34:58.495)
Okay, yeah, no, I get that. I’m gonna use that bad joke for the later.

The youngest one wants to be an Olympic gymnast, so task focused. So yeah, I would definitely encourage people to become dentists for sure. You know, it’s a career that I love. I wholeheartedly would endorse it if it was someone that can then guide you through that process. So for the second generation, the third generation, well, let’s be honest, they probably would get a leg up.

Andy & Chris (35:14.)
fabulous. What great ambitions.

Andy & Chris (35:33.008)
Yeah.

Luke (35:40.383)
in their professional development, absolutely, I would say, yeah, get involved, you know, do it. For somebody that had no idea what they were getting themselves into, I would probably educate them. Let’s leave it at that.

Andy & Chris (35:40.464)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:54.228)
Yes. Interesting. Luke, we always finish up the same way. We have two questions for you. And the first one is you can be a fly on a wall in a situation. Where are you and who’s there?

Luke (36:08.031)
I probably would want to be on Apollo 11, I think. Moon landing. I just think that opportunity to tread where no one has ever trod before you is just a fantastic thing. To sit there with those boys and work out, were they shit scared like I would have been? Or were they really excited? What was kind of the emotional energy going through the room? Was Michael…

Andy & Chris (36:13.904)
Andy & Chris (36:20.88)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Andy & Chris (36:27.664)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (36:33.712)
Mm -hmm. Well that was that that was back in 1969 and they’re just starting of talking about having a project to go back and build a station on the moon and everything else So your time might come in fact, I’ve got a seven inch single which is the recording of the moon landing That shows how old I am doesn’t it? My mom and dad bought it for me. I remember sitting up because it was something must have happened in the middle of night I remember sitting watching it. It was June 1969. Yeah

Luke (36:38.303)
It was.

Luke (36:44.739)
Well, I…

Luke (36:52.479)
Yeah.

Luke (37:00.255)
it was. I feel sorry for Michael Collins. Unless you know, you don’t know, Dee, he’s forced you out sat there and orbiting the moon and getting none of the credit. It’s like…

Andy & Chris (37:04.176)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s like coming second in the Olympics, isn’t it? Unfortunately, nobody remembers the gold medalist, isn’t it? Yeah. And our follow up question is you get the opportunity to meet somebody, sit down, have a nice pint of beer or glass of wine or a coffee. Who are you going to sit down and have a chat to?

Luke (37:16.287)
It really is, yeah, absolutely.

Luke (37:30.207)
For me, probably my granddad. Because I never met him on my mum’s side. Yeah, on my mum’s side. So my granddad on my mum’s side, never met him. Always wanted to. Sounded like the most fascinating character. So it’s just from an emotive point of view. You know, when you look back in time and just you hear so many stories about a person so much. Kind of goes to the family rhetoric about people.

Andy & Chris (37:33.648)
Okay.

Is this on your mum’s side or your dad’s side? On your mum’s side, right.

Andy & Chris (37:52.848)
Yeah.

Mm.

Andy & Chris (37:59.792)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke (37:59.903)
and you never had that opportunity. There were two bits of the conversation I would have with him. Number one, he was quite an influential chap at one point in time. So he actually owned gold mines in South Africa, interestingly. And number two, he was a alcoholic, so gambled away the gold mines on a game of poker. He sounds like the most fascinating person you’d want to sit down and have a beer with.

Andy & Chris (38:10.928)
All right.

wow. Wow.

Andy & Chris (38:19.504)
excellent excellent no yeah flipping it wow yeah

Luke (38:29.663)
and maybe pick up a deck of cards with. But yeah, just one of the people from time that I would have loved to have met. There’s obviously thousands and thousands and thousands of other people when you ask that question though. You sit there and there’s a whole list of people as long as your arm. But for me,

Andy & Chris (38:37.968)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (38:43.312)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (38:47.312)
It’s quite often a lot of people want to meet a grandpa, a granddad of some description. It’s quite interesting. Yeah. Because it’s that connection to the past, isn’t it?

Luke (38:51.615)
And.

I think it’s interesting. Correct. Let’s see where your roots have come from, I guess. To see why my mother is quite so psychopathic as she is. Is it my granddad or my grandmother? I don’t know.

Andy & Chris (38:58.704)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (39:05.712)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the great thing is you you do have those stories, you know You can still share those stories with you know, your your parents and your kids So these kind of people live on through stories, but it’s not quite the same as having that and first hand years to come His children luke’s children will be able to see granddad on youtube on a podcast exactly Look at that. Hey Yeah, look at that. You’re now good preserved for posterity. Yeah

Luke (39:15.775)
Yeah.

Luke (39:19.935)
Definitely.

Luke (39:27.743)
god yeah. That’s a very good point isn’t it?

Luke (39:36.447)
Pickle for Susperity Sunday.

Andy & Chris (39:37.456)
Pickle. Right, Luke, we’ll let you go. We know that you’re busy with patients. Thanks very much, man. Really good. It’s been really, really enjoyable. Really, really enjoyable. Look after yourself. We’ll see you soon. Cheers, man. Take care. Cheers.

Luke (39:41.343)
Cheers Andy, cheers Chris. Thanks both. Bye guys.