Ever since I opened the doors of the White Clinic in 1999, my team and I have always had a “start-up” mentality. Why? Because no two days are the same and we need to be prepared for anything. We always need to be on top of our game. Why? Because experience matters.

I am beyond excited to be speaking at the 50th Annual Ernest M. Jones Memorial Lecture at Washington State University in Seattle, on September 16th.

Ekaterina Miheeva reached out to me all the way from Australia after about 3 years of battling a series of physical and psychological symptoms that not only did not go away, but that more than 10 doctors, 15 naturopaths, and multiple exams, including a brain scan, endoscopies and colonoscopies, simply could not solve.

Dr. Miguel Stanley, considered one of the top 100 dentists in the world, is the founder and clinical director of the internationally-recognized White Clinic, a leading Dental Center based in Lisbon.

When I graduated from university in 1998, the internet was in its early stages and social media was in the distant future, and the yellow pages (Google it if you’re under 30) was still a place where I would go to try and find out about business contacts.

There are many challenges facing the modern dentist today. It does not really matter if you are a dentist just beginning your career or a senior practitioner with a network of clinics. These challenges all boil down to a few simple commonalities: we all have to keep our patients happy, and we all have to keep them coming back.

This was a very busy week for me, with two great trips, the opportunity to participate in exciting events, alongside networking with amazing colleagues from around the globe that share my passion for all things dentistry.

When I first heard about clear aligners in the early 2000s (the US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of clear aligners to straighten teeth in 1980), it must have sounded like science fiction. The fact that it was created in Silicon Valley by people who had nothing to do with the dental industry, in seeking solutions that do not require complicated appliances in the mouth, is really an incredible story.

Why do we need to straighten teeth? How do we do it? What is the best way? These are the big questions nowadays, and I think that the answers to these questions, as well as how we actually do these treatments, have changed over the past decades.

Data regarding oral health in Portugal is worrisome. Thirty percent of the Portuguese only go to the dentist in an emergency and 10% of the national population has no teeth.