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At award-winning Family Dental Care, Dr Jashandeep Kaur has built a culturally-diverse and gender-inclusive practice that reflects the community it serves. By Shane Conroy
Dr Jashandeep Kaur is driven by a powerful sense of duty to create opportunities for others.
Her award-winning practice, Family Dental Care, predominantly employs female practitioners. She has also built a culturally-diverse team that reflects the multiculturalism of its home in Sydney’s Campbelltown region.
Family Dental Care was recently named ‘Business of the Decade’ at the 2024 Australian Small Business Champion Awards, and Dr Kaur is quick to credit her team for the practice’s success.
“The award is the outcome of having a very hardworking, customer-oriented team which is highly trained, experienced and motivated,” she says. “Our positive team culture is about trying to achieve ultimate customer satisfaction, and I think our patient-centric approach sets us apart from other businesses.”
Doing it her way
Dr Kaur was born and raised in a small village in Punjab, India. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a housewife, and both parents instilled the importance of education in their gifted young daughter.
“My parents were very passionate about my education and my father would drive a long distance to drop me at school,” she remembers. “I always wanted to be a medical professional, and I was doing exceptionally well in my studies.”
Her parents’ unwavering support laid the foundation for Dr Kaur’s own perseverance and sense of responsibility toward creating opportunities for others. But it was a visit to a local dentist when she was in year 12—and his compassionate chairside demeanour—that would ultimately inspire her career path and spark her passion for patient-centred care.
“Seeing the way the dentist was interacting with his patients, and the way he was helping every patient arriving in pain with calmness and kindness, made me so inspired that I chose dentistry.”
Dr Kaur completed a Bachelor of Dental Surgery in India in 2012, and practised there until she got married in 2014 and moved to Sydney with her husband. After passing her Australian Dental Council examination, she began work as an associate dentist. This would prove to be another formative experience that shaped the way she’s built and runs her practice today.
Multiculturalism at our workplace has been one of the reasons for our business and financial success too. Our patients get more choice and feel more comfortable as our team can provide services according to their unique choices and concerns.
Dr Jashandeep Kaur, owner, Family Dental Care
Working at under-staffed practices with poorly trained dental assistants and insufficient appointment times provided a blueprint of what not to do as owner and principal dentist at Family Dental Care.
“As an associate dentist, I learned so much, but at the same time, I felt I could do so much more if I was a dental practice owner. Now, at Family Care Dental, I make sure my staff is trained on a regular basis, we are well staffed, everyone is appropriately and promptly paid, and everyone has a manageable workload. Now that I am a practice owner, I also have the luxury to spend time creating more connections with my patients. I encourage my other dentists to do the same and give them enough time to do so.”
United in diversity
Dr Kaur has hand-picked a culturally-diverse team that reflects the community they serve.
According to the latest Census data, 3.9 per cent of Campbelltown residents were born in India, 3.1 per cent in Bangladesh, 2.8 per cent in the Philippines, and 0.8 per cent in Nepal. These figures are notably higher than the national averages, and Dr Kaur recognised early on that serving a diverse community required a team that was just as diverse.
By hiring staff from different backgrounds, she aimed to break down cultural barriers in healthcare and ensure patients felt understood and respected.
“We have dentists from Indian, Asian, and Arabic backgrounds, which provides so much more choice to our patients from different cultures and backgrounds,” she says. “[This cultural diversity] helps us to make patients comfortable when visiting our practice because language and cultural barriers stop a lot of people from getting timely dental help.
“Multiculturalism at our workplace has been one of the reasons for our business and financial success too. Our patients get more choice and feel more comfortable as our team can provide services according to their unique choices and concerns.”
Dr Kaur says the benefits of a multicultural practice extend to her team as well. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around one in four (26 per cent) employed dentists obtained their initial qualification in countries other than Australia and New Zealand. That, says Dr Kaur, is a rich pool of expertise and perspectives to draw from.
“Having dentists from various backgrounds helps the overall skill level of our team as the workplace becomes a melting pot of various ideas, techniques, outlooks, and expertise. Working with teammates from various backgrounds has brought so much positivity, awareness, and cultural sensitivity to our entire team, and everyone seems to be more relaxed and happy as cultural barriers fall down.”
Dr Kaur says open communication is the key to creating a harmonious, supportive multicultural workplace, and actively encourages her team members to share cultural experiences and ask respectful questions to develop mutual understanding.
“We always wish everyone well at their special religious festivals and share gifts and food, and we organise work parties and events for our team to interact outside of the workplace,” she explains. “There is more respect and a sense of team spirit, and I can say that people who work in a multicultural business do experience personal and professional growth, and the entire workplace benefits from it.”
Bridging the gender gap
Empowering women is also at the core of Dr Kaur’s practice. According to the Dental Board of Australia, 56.2 per cent of registered dental practitioners in Australia identify as female, and Dr Kaur has seen the gender balance shift play out on the ground.
“Globally, dentistry is dominated by men, but in the past few years I have seen a large influx of women in the dental workforce,” she says. “I have a team of eight dentists, and six of them are women.”
While she says female dentists may provide a more calming and empathetic experience for patients, it’s important to avoid gender stereotypes and instead focus on the individual performance of the dentist.
“It comes down to their individual traits and values rather than gender,” she says. “However, in some cultures, patients prefer to see a woman dentist, so employing women does bring more choice for our patients.”
Dr Kaur says regular communication and feedback is the key to helping female practitioners in her practice navigate various professional challenges. She includes her female team members in day-to-day decision-making and provides flexibility in their work hours. Dr Kaur is also an advocate for equal pay and supports all her practitioners to develop their professional skills.
“We encourage them to take up more courses [to learn] new techniques and tools, and to keep up to date with dental industry trends,” she says. “We also let our practitioners decide their appointment types and duration, and hold regular meetings with them to help us understand their unique way of working and their concerns.
“Female practice owners and public speakers in dentistry are becoming a norm now, which is a great thing for society and the economy. Australian women in dentistry are a fine example of how much women can offer if given equal opportunity, and this is going to have a ripple effect in other industries where women are still in short numbers.
“The sky’s the limit for women, not just in dentistry but in every field.”
