I am both the owner of Resolution and one of the orthodontists there, so it falls to me to set the direction for the practice and that of our clinical teams. Many of my own patients will know that I have a passion for ‘stargazing’. Recently I’ve been working on a book related to astronomy which has led me to read a lot about telescopes and the people that make them.
Most telescopes now are produced in huge quantities by one or two high volume manufacturers in the Far East and are sold by dealers in the UK who vary widely in their ability to match the telescope they sell to the needs of the person buying it and in the aftercare they provide. These are not bad products generally but I have, in recent times, started to use a couple of telescopes from small UK based manufacturers. The difference with these is apparent in several ways; firstly they are customised to exactly meet the needs of the particular client, secondly they are produced by a master craftsman who is on the other end of an email and they have a knowledgeable and decent aftercare service to sort out the inevitable odd issue that arises.
I tell you all this not because I guess many of you will want to become amateur astronomers (though do shout if you are), but because I have realised that these same values are those that I aspire to at Resolution. Firstly, we try really hard to understand exactly what each patient wants and then customise a treatment plan to achieve that. This is a subtle balancing of the effort needed from the patient for a given treatment, the treatment length, and the cost against what will be achieved. Secondly, I only work with people I trust at Resolution and we have a definite emphasis on long term education for everyone including me; this ensures that we can genuinely claim to offer expert care and a ‘craftsman’ approach to what we do. Thirdly, we use materials and techniques that we know to be reliable and effective. These things taken together result in measurably better outcomes for our patients, just as those UK telescopes are the best I’ve used. This seems to me to be the right approach and many of our patients seem to deeply appreciate this personally crafted service in times when so much of our healthcare is prepackaged and mass produced. In any case I wish you clear skies.