Why I Became a Specialist Orthodontist — and What That Word Actually Means

When people ask what I do, I say I’m an orthodontist, and most of the time that’s the end of it. But there’s a longer answer hiding behind the word specialist, and I think it’s worth unpacking — because it makes a real difference to the person sitting in my chair, and it isn’t something patients are usually told.

This is the first piece in a short series I’m writing for the BDS Dental blog. Over the next few posts I want to walk through the things patients ask me about most: how orthodontics differs depending on who’s doing it, why I’d often rather see a child early than wait, how Invisalign actually works, whether it’s worth doing as an adult, and what happens with the genuinely complicated cases. But before any of that, I want to start where I started — with how I ended up doing this for a living, and what the training behind the title really involves.

How I came to dentistry, and then to orthodontics

I didn’t have a single lightning-bolt moment. What I had was an interest in science at school, a run of work experience across a few different fields, and a growing sense that I wanted a career built around working with people and helping them directly. Dentistry brought those together — and, honestly, it also offered a kind of flexibility and balance that mattered to me when I thought about the shape of a working life. So I went into it, and I’ve never regretted that.

Orthodontics came later, and it came because it suited the way my mind works. It’s methodical. It’s planned out over months. You’re not firefighting — you’re building towards a result you’ve designed in advance, adjusting as you go, watching it slowly come right. There’s something deeply satisfying about that kind of patient, deliberate work, and the more of it I did, the more certain I became that it was where I wanted to focus.

The training behind the word “specialist”

Here’s the part most people don’t see. To call yourself a specialist orthodontist in the UK, you go a long way past dental school.

After qualifying as a dentist, I spent two years working in hospital across different areas — paediatric dentistry, maxillofacial surgery, oral medicine. That’s where you get your well-rounded grounding, seeing how the rest of the mouth and the wider picture fit together before you narrow your focus. After that, you apply for specialty training, which is three years dedicated entirely to orthodontics. At the time I trained, a master’s or doctorate was a compulsory part of that — and at the end of it you sit a membership exam.

For me, that wasn’t the end. I then did a further two years to become a consultant, which is the level at which you take on the most complex cases, finishing with a fellowship exam. So the short version is: dental degree, then hospital, then three years of specialty training, then two more to consult. It’s a long road, and it’s deliberately so. Orthodontics done properly isn’t about straightening a few teeth — it’s about understanding how the teeth, the bite, and the jaws all relate to one another, and planning around the whole picture.

I’ll get into what that difference means in practice in the next piece, because it’s one of the most important things a patient can understand before choosing who treats them.

The year that shaped how I treat people

My master’s was in shared decision making, and of everything I studied, that’s the idea that has stayed with me most.

It sounds almost obvious when you say it out loud — that the patient should be an active partner in decisions about their own treatment, not a passive recipient of a plan handed down to them. But it genuinely reshaped how I work. No two patients are the same, even when their teeth look identical on a scan. Two people can present with the exact same bite and the exact same crowding, and the right plan for one is the wrong plan for the other — because their concerns are different, their tolerance for treatment is different, what they want out of it is different.

So I tailor. I tailor the treatment plan and I tailor the appointments to the individual in front of me. That’s the throughline of everything I do, and you’ll see it come up again and again across this series. It’s not a slogan. It’s the actual mechanism by which good orthodontics happens.

My other job: complex cases in hospital

Alongside my work at BDS, I work as an NHS consultant, treating the complicated end of the spectrum. These are patients with jaw deformities, where I plan and carry out the orthodontics while a maxillofacial surgeon handles the surgical side, and the two have to be choreographed together. They’re patients born with teeth missing, or with cleft lip and palate. They’re patients with complex medical histories that make ordinary treatment anything but ordinary.

I value that work enormously, and not only for its own sake. It keeps me on my toes. It hands me challenges that specialist practice alone wouldn’t, and it means the experience I bring back to BDS is broader for it. When I tell a patient I’ve seen something before, it’s usually true — and that range is part of why I can offer some of those more complicated, multidisciplinary treatments at the practice rather than sending people elsewhere. I’ll come back to that later in the series.

Why this matters before you choose treatment

I’m not writing this to wave credentials around. I’m writing it because the depth of training behind an orthodontist genuinely changes what you’re getting — and most patients have never had it explained to them.

When you understand that there’s a difference between a few teeth being nudged into line and a whole bite being assessed, planned, and corrected by someone who has spent the better part of a decade learning to do exactly that, you’re in a far better position to ask the right questions and make the right choice for yourself. That’s the whole point of this series. Not to sell you anything, but to help you understand the field well enough to make a properly informed decision.

In the next piece, I want to tackle the question I think matters most: the real difference between a specialist orthodontist and a general dentist who “does braces” — and why it’s worth knowing which one you’re sitting in front of.

Thanks for reading.

Dr Farnaz Motamedi is a specialist orthodontist at BDS Dental and an NHS consultant, with a master’s degree (awarded with distinction) in shared decision making. To book an orthodontic consultation, contact the practice here.