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My Dad Built This Practice. Here's the Story He'd Want You to Know.
- John Barclay
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By Dr John Barclay | DRJB Smile Clinic, Ruabon, North Wales
The surgery has been here a long time. Long enough that some of the patients who sit in the chair remember my dad sitting in it first — on the other side of it, looking at their teeth, knowing their names, knowing their children's names, knowing who'd had a hard year and who hadn't.
He built this from nothing. Seven days a week for years, alongside my mum, to give his children options. He didn't build a business. He built a community of patients who trusted him enough to keep coming back for decades.
When he retired, he handed me his patients. Not a list. Not a file. People. People who had known him for twenty, thirty years. That isn't something you inherit lightly.
What He Taught Me That Isn't in a Textbook
He mentored me through five years after foundation training. Gradually letting go of the reins. Trusting me with more, then more, then everything. The clinical skills were part of it. The deeper lesson was something else.
He treated patients like family. Not as a marketing line — as a fact. He knew things about their lives that had nothing to do with their teeth. He remembered. He asked. He cared whether they were alright, not just whether their occlusion was.
I watched him do this for years before I understood what I was watching. It wasn't a bedside manner. It was a philosophy. The mouth matters because the person it belongs to matters.
That's still how this practice runs.
Why We Stayed in Wrexham
My dad could have moved. He chose not to. He chose Ruabon, North Wales, and the community here — when other paths were available.
People ask me the same question sometimes. Why stay? Why not a city, a bigger patient base, more visibility?
The answer is the same one he'd give. Because this is where the patients are. Because communities deserve good dentistry, not just cities. Because the families who trusted my dad deserve someone who'll give them the same standard of care. Because loyalty runs in both directions.
The practice he built is the reason this community has access to the level of endodontic and restorative treatment that would otherwise require a trip to Manchester or Liverpool. That matters. It's supposed to matter.
What He Doesn't Know Yet
There's a plan to bring this practice fully under our own ownership — our own name, our own roof, our own future. He built the foundations for it. Literally. He owns the building.
When the time is right, he'll be the first to know. He'll love it. He's been waiting for it, even if he doesn't know he has.
I'm not sentimental about much. But I am sentimental about this. He gave me something most people don't get — a profession, a practice, and a standard of care to live up to. I'm not finished living up to it yet.
If You're New to Us
The practice has changed. The equipment, the techniques, the technology — all of it has moved forward. The thing that hasn't changed is why we do it.
If you're a patient who came through my dad's door years ago: you're still welcome here. The chair's in the same place.
If you're new: this is who we are. This is what we're built on.
📞 01978 823490
References & Further Reading
1. General Dental Council. Standards for the Dental Team — Principle 1: Put patients' interests first. GDC, 2013 (updated 2019). → The professional framework that underpins the patient-as-family philosophy described in this post.
2. Mercer SW et al. The consultation and relational empathy (CARE) measure: development and preliminary validation and reliability of an empathy-based consultation process measure. Family Practice, 2004. → Supports the clinical value of genuine patient-centred care and relational continuity.
3. Holt VP, McHugh K. Factors influencing patient loyalty to dentist and dental practice. British Dental Journal, 1997. → Long-term patient retention data; supports the case for relationship-centred care over transactional dentistry.
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