Meet Dr. Ben

I’m Dr. Ben, and I am a third-generation dentist in Buffalo, NY. I have been interested in dentistry since hearing stories about dental care around the dinner table, and it’s always really positive to have this family influence. I often say that it’s an unfair advantage because when you’re five or six years old, and you hear about these issues or dental patients regularly, it helps develop you as a person.  

I would say dentistry and that patient care component is in my blood. I remember a lot of these home visits that were being talked about many, many years ago and emergencies on the weekends – this real high-level of care and compassion for the patients. I always thought that the independence that dentistry gave a human, a person to be able to spread their love in the community, and in their own way, show care and respect for members of their community that trust them to handle different diseases or problems or emergencies for them.  

I always felt that it was a big honor to have the ability to do that. And so, I pursued my career in dentistry with kind of this baseline of understanding as a young person growing up in a home where we talked about dental care and patient care, we had physicians and dentists in my family growing up, and that was you know, that was the discussion the surgeons would always want to carve the turkey during Thanksgiving, and we’d make light of that.  

There were a number of conversations about taking care of an interesting case and an interesting procedure that was done, and I’d be listening in. It definitely drove me in the direction of dentistry. When I was in middle school, even in high school, I already kind of knew that that was the path I was going to take. I liked to take the science courses and was proud to get good grades in science, thinking that that was all you need to know – that dentistry is about the science of it. The more and more we’re talking, I’m thinking about what dentistry really is. It’s about the relationship.  

And I like to humanize dentistry in a way. So, if we’re asking a little bit about me, not only how I got into dentistry, but I really enjoy building relationships with patients. Certainly, I’ve developed pretty involved skill sets to get the work done as well. But building this picture and putting the puzzle pieces together is what really stimulates me.