Melissa Taylor from Wadebridge Dental explains why she entered the Private Dentistry Awards and the impact it’s had on her practice.
How does it feel to have won an award?
What a fantastic feeling the team ended 2019 with. We were genuinely delighted and incredibly proud to win a prestigious Private Dentistry Award for Most Improved Practice. It was a total surprise and we are all incredibly proud of what we have achieved together as a team over these past years.
This award followed our win for Best Patient Care South West at the Dentistry Awards in November 2019. We are still stunned now!
Did you enjoy the ceremony?
Thirteen members of the team travelled from Cornwall to London for the glitzy Private Dentistry Awards ceremony. Delighted at being finalists in five categories we all wanted to celebrate and have a great evening together.
To win was unexpected and you will see by our beaming proud smiles in the photos we had the best evening. The evening was so much fun. Meeting lots of other dentists and people from the dental industry along with fantastic entertainment really made it a night to remember.
Eleven members of our team also travelled to Leicester for the Dentistry Awards in November, where we all enjoyed letting our hair down, dancing the night away and topped it off by winning the award for Best Patient Care South West. Another night that will not be forgotten!
Why did you choose to enter the awards?
In recent years our practice has changed dramatically. The team has worked incredibly hard together achieving such fantastic feedback from patients, further training and with ongoing investment and improvements we wanted to celebrate this.
We did not know whether we would even be considered or we were good enough. We are very fortunate that others on the judging panel felt we were deserving of this. And we are so pleased we entered.
What do you think the awards are doing to the standards within the profession?
The awards are now very popular amongst dental professionals. There are more and more entries each year and more people attending the ceremonies.
Standards continue to increase alongside this. Investments into dentistry continue and improvements made for the patient experience and working experiences for the dental profession.
This can only be a good thing.
Why do you think you won?
We did not expect to win, and are still delighted about it!
We would like to think the judges could see in our entry the genuine investment into the team, practice and patient experience as a whole. The time taken to build and gain what we have from where we were a few years ago is both unusual in its speed and success.
It has been a lot of hard work and dedication, feedback is amazing from patients and the team.
The practice has improved tremendously. We are just so proud that the judges could see this at both awards.
Have you noticed a difference in patient numbers since winning the award?
Yes! We continue to accept more and more private patients month on month. Multi award-winning allows patients to feel confident they have chosen a reputable practice alongside patient recommendations and feedback.
It is part of why a patient may choose us as a practice when looking.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you to everyone at FMC for so much time and effort that you all put into making these prestigious awards evenings so much fun and so successful.
A big thank you to all the judges that have a lot of entries to sift through and make decisions on, not an easy job I am sure. Hopefully see you later in 2020!
