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Baking & boot camp… Eric Barton meets up with Gloucester dentist Dr Suganthy Suthagar PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES TANDY I like cake. I don’t like boot camp. However, I do know that I shouldn’t eat sugary cakes and that I should go to boot camp. It’s a dichotomy that pains me, but thankfully not in my teeth yet. So it’s a great relief to find out that a local dentist is both pragmatic and deeply human in these matters i.e. we shouldn’t have sugar but we sometimes do. Dr Suganthy Suthagar is the kind of dentist I’d love to go to. She’s soothing, pleasant and brimming with confidence about her abilities and that of the team that surround and support her at The Courtlands Dental Practice in Gloucester. Dentistry to me is all about qualifications, training and skill. It’s a profession where technology keeps moving at a pace that leads to new techniques and materials that can improve the quality of treatment that can be provided to patients. Suganthy did her training at Sheffield Dental School in 1993 and then a move to Toronto in Canada beckoned. This was for Suganthy an epiphany as it transpired that Canada (at the time) was almost ten years ahead of the UK in terms of treatment and techniques. In 2005 she made a return to the UK deciding to go into practice for herself. Suganthy commented, “I really wanted to do my own thing. When I took over the practice it was a lot smaller then and the owner at the time was on the point of retiring’’. She went on to say, ‘’in spring of 2013 I decided that the time was ripe to make some changes and expand the practice in both terms of space and what we had to offer patients’’. It’s very clear by the smell of new paint and the pristine appearance of the practice that a huge amount of work has gone on to make the practice what it is today. Suganthy goes on to comment, “I had a great amount of support from my architect Russell from The Eric Cole Partnership, my builder Ryan from Farrdenn and my accountant Phil from Pitt, Godden and Taylor to enable this expansion to happen’’. Like any growing 98 OCTOBER 2014 COTSWOLD STYLE
business Courtlands Dental Practice needs and wants to stay ahead of the competition. Suganthy further adds, “It’s crucial for us to mentor young dentists. It’s a real quid pro quo situation for us. These young dentists are brimming with all the latest techniques and in return we’re able to offer the benefits of experience when it comes to dealing with and treating patients’’. The capital investment needed to make the expansion swallowed up over £200K, which is no small sum. Suganthy says, ‘’it was a really tough eight months to get the project completed. We had to jump
through several hoops with the planning department to enable the building works to go ahead’’. She further says, “lots of our patients have really embraced the changes and have been hugely supportive’’. It’s a testament to herself and her staff that some patients who were registered to the old business for some thirty years have stayed loyal to Courtlands. The practice itself is awash with all the latest equipment and treatment rooms. It’s a very pleasant place to be. I’ve been in some dental practices that would scare an ogre. Not here. It’s a warming, friendly place that