Dental Leaders Podcast
#356 Win The Day — Afzal Haque
Afzal Haque joins Payman as a specialist endodontist and owner of Stretford Road Dental Practice, along with its referral clinic M41 Indo, in South Manchester, having spent ten years as a general dentist before making the switch. He talks candidly about hating endodontics as a young dentist, the wife who talked him into rotary instrumentation and then, years later, into selling their house to fund three years of specialist training in Liverpool. There's a properly moving stretch on the sacrifice that decision demanded of his young family, and on the culture of fear he encountered as an undergraduate that still shapes how he teaches today. This is also a masterclass in referral dentistry: building trust with generalists, pricing endodontic treatment simply, and why the happiest dentists are the ones who communicate well rather than the ones who never make mistakes. Expect sharp thinking on bioceramics, root canal myths, AI in the surgery, and a properly honest account of growing up as the only brown kid in his primary school class. In This Episode 00:00:45 – Introduction 00:02:10 – Family background and choosing dentistry 00:13:30 – Falling into endodontics 00:15:50 – Selling the house for specialist training 00:22:55 – Why endo suits him better than general dentistry 00:28:25 – Building a referral-based practice 00:40:45 – Team, AI and running the practice 00:45:35 – Endo heroes and technique 00:59:15 – Bioceramics and modern materials 01:01:50 – Root canal myths and AI search 01:08:45 – Toxic teaching culture 01:15:50 – Specialist training and family sacrifice 01:24:05 – Blackbox thinking 01:35:25 – Robots and the future of dentistry 01:38:15 – Fantasy dinner party and growing up in Manchester About Afzal Haque Afzal Haque is a specialist endodontist and owner of Stretford Road Dental Practice and its referral clinic, M41 Indo, in South Manchester. He spent ten years as a general dentist before training as an endodontist at the University of Liverpool, and now also works as a senior lecturer at UCLan and as a specialist adviser for the CQC.
